Trail of Tears
by Minnionette
Summary: Madara and Hashirama had plans to build Konoha. Plans get changed when South Sea raiders plunder and pillage multiple clans, slaughtering adults and kidnapping children. The Inuzuka clan is just terrifying enough to herd the Senju and Uchiha men cross-country to rip out throats, dismantle bodies, throw the pieces into the longboats, and set the whole thing on fire.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note:** I always did want to write a pre-Konohagakure/Founders story, in which Inuzuka Tsume's ancestors more-or-less herds Hashirama and Madara cross-country on Adventures and Shenanigans. Also, this is, like, probably the only story in existence in which there are Jashinist-Vikings in the same universe as Naruto, so, uh, go me? (Also, even better, I can guarantee weekly updates! I have managed to complete a story! Which, uh, requires extensive editing, because I wrote it all in one week while sleep-deprived. Which is why updates would be weekly.)

* * *

The stench of blood and burnt flesh was thick in the air, every bit as heavy as the clang of warring weapons and the screams of the wounded.

And Uchiha Madara wanted the world to burn. "You dare!" he hissed, the edge of his gunbai locked against Hashirama's. Their arms trembled as Madara bore his full strength and weight against Hashirama's sword. Hashirama's gaze was narrow and flint-hard. "You told me you wanted peace – men who want peace don't attack innocent women and kidnap children!"

"I do want peace!" Hashirama yelled back. He dug his heels into the churned dirt clumps and used his leverage to push against Madara.

Madara twisted his body and blade to capture Hashirama's weapon, keeping them locked. "I _trusted_ you! Who strikes down _pregnant women_?"

"WE WOULD NEVER! No more than you would, and _our pregnant women are dead too!"_ The rage that flared in Hashirama's face, rage that had been simmering below the surface until now, shocked Madara even more than the sight over Hashirama's shoulder, when he saw Izuna slide backwards from Tobirama, blade stuck tight against bone. So instead, he focused on a blot of shadow across Hashirama's face… a shadow that was quickly enveloping his own self. With another twist, he unhooked their blades, and they pushed away from each other in a silent agreement.

Madara's enhanced vision allowed him to see every individual fluttering strand of copper-bright hair, every shiny bauble and feather and weapon woven into the hair, the crimson triangles, the upside down whales painted across a voluminous pair of bare beasts, and the curled fist as she silently dropped to where they had stood.

Inuzuka Natsumi struck the battle-churned ground with such chakra-enhanced force that the ground split asunder, ripping into a small ravine that would've engulfed Madara and Hashirama. The ground continued to splinter and separate even as she somersaulted in midair away from the rapidly-born ravine without once touching any solid surface – damn Inuzuka women and their impossible aerodynamic attacks – and softly landed beside Hashirama. The sudden attack immediately drew attention from everyone else on the battle field, most freezing in surprise.

"Stupid men," Natsumi declared, catching a near-by Senju's blade barehanded when he lunged at her to protect Hashirama. The chakra visibly flaring at her hand prevented any injury. Hashirama didn't move as his face went beet red when he realized just how close they stood together. "You aren't the only ones the South Sea raiders hit."

Madara jerked back, raising his gunbai in defense as another shadow darted in front of him. Inuzuka Shinzou, her hair as red as her sister's but much more wild and evidently free of ornaments, was crouched low, so close he could feel the warm puff of her breath against his shin, laid bear from where Hashirama's attack had destroyed his shin guard. "But evidently you were just stupid enough to blame each other," she said, "and if you kill each other off, there's less of you to hunt down and make the _real_ culprits pay." Then she straightened from her crouch.

Like Natsumi, Shinzou was naked from the waist up. Her skin was painted with the crimson outlines of wolves taking long, leaping strides. She was also very, _very_ pregnant, so far along that her pierced nipples leaked milky trails over her swollen belly. Oh fuck. He was never going to get _that_ image out of his mind, thanks to the thrice-cursed vision of the Sharingan.

"Kind gentleman," Shinzou said, glancing around, raising her arms and her voice and not caring at all that the sight of her body was so unusual in its public display. Her expression clearly indicated that she found the men present to be neither kind, nor gentle. "We all have a mutual problem. And while you may insist on carrying on with a grudge between each other that's generations old, my sister and I kindly request that you let bygones be bygones long enough to assist us in rescuing our children." Shinzou's eyes and smile were as cold and as sharp as Madara's blade as other Inuzuka women flashed onto the battlefield, their half-naked bodies poised for attack as they stepped between Senju and Uchiha, knocking aside blades and separating those who had frozen in mid-grapple with each other. "While I would love to say we don't need your assistance, we probably do, considering how these raiders managed to brutally slay the very capable guards we had left behind, and we want to leave your children with the raiders a lot less than we want your assistance."

As Madara attempted to parse what exactly the Inuzuka Clan Head meant, Natsumi tossed her tangled hair over her shoulder. One of the caltrops woven in its waist-length end bounced off of Hashirama's cheek, leaving a bloody scratch behind. "We _could_ keep the female children if you boys killed each other off, but what would we do with the male children?"

"The Nara would take them," Shinzou replied.

Natsumi blew a raspberry. "I refuse to subject myself to the Nara Shikataro's whining and pouting about the inconvenience we've brought upon his clan for the gods' know how many generations. I say we dump Senju and Uchiha boys on the Hyuuga clan. It's not like they wouldn't want their hands on them, anyway. Now, excuse me, I have to heal this clumsy idiot for tripping and falling on a blade." She snarled at a Senju who raise his staff to block her path. "Do you like your balls where they're at, or should I rip them off?" He immediately dropped his staff.

"Excuse me," Hashirama began, allowing the tip of his blade to point downward and raising his other hand in the air, "but what the hell is going on? Inuzuka women just don't interrupt battles."

Nor did they surround active battles with their ninken. Madara glanced around and saw the lurking canines, massive in size and their haunches rippling with intimidation, circling the site. If anyone attacked the Inuzuka women, the ninken would close in with readied fangs and claws. He couldn't remember the last time he was surrounded. Well, actually, he _could,_ and he had taken out every single one of those fools. But he had been surrounded by four Hyuuga, not dozens of ninken. Carving a bloody path through animals bred to fight might prove to be more difficult.

"Weren't you listening?" Shinzou asked as she turned towards Hashirama. Madara's gaze flickered between her – standing so close that he could sink a kunai into her spine and sever it without having to take a step forward – and her sister, whose stride across the field to where his brother lay, gurgling as the blade buried in his chest bobbed with each desperate gasp, was smooth and as steady as a stalking wolf. Then Shinzou raised a hand and yelled at Uchiha Natsuo, who decided to try sliding a second tanto free of its scabbard, "THE FIGHTING ENDS NOW OR I'LL RIP YOUR ARM OFF AND CLUB YOU INTO SUBMISSION WITH ITS BLOODY STUMP."

It was so terribly like an angry mother yelling at her child that Hashirama snorted in amusement, and then quickly wiped away the smile when Shinzou turned back to him, brow furrowing in irritation. He coughed. "So, uh, you mentioned South Sea raiders. There hasn't been any in the last three generations."

"La-di-da. They came back. Apparently, three generations was enough to recover from the beat-down the Uzumaki provided."

"Did you see them?"

Shinzou placed both hands on her widened hips, just above where the short leather skirt hung, barely hiding the slope of her buttocks. Madara was really contemplating the pros and cons of tearing out his eyeballs and living the life of a blind warrior. He had heard of an order of warrior monks up north who were fully capable of protecting their village and herds despite sacrificing their vision to their gods.

"They were gone three days by the time we reached our wintering huts. I don't have to see to know what my nose tells me. Their stench was full of the odors of the South Seas – fruits not native to our lands, heavy with deep-sea fish, whales, sea creatures we don't have here. Their broken weapons – weapons left in the bodies of my clanswomen – were created from whale bones. Any more questions?"

Hashirama's gaze, soft with pain, flickered towards Madara's. "But history doesn't describe the level of viciousness that destroyed _our_ people."

Madara remembered what had happened to his own clan, in vivid detail, never to be forgotten as the Sharingan had seared the details into his brain. The Uchiha had been divided on three fronts. The first front – two-thirds of the clan – had been preparing the clan's winter fortress. The second front had been left at a small, seasonal village. Fifty women and children, guarded by an experienced force of ten men, were supposed to spend a very busy week harvesting the fruits and nuts for the fortress's food stores.

The third front, Madara, along with his brother and another ten strong, had met with the Senju to work on a peace treaty between their clans, and to discuss Hashirama's dream of creating a village to live side by side in peace. They agreed that they should actively start next spring, creating homes and breaking ground for crops, and use the winter to hammer out the logistical nightmare known as _administration_. After what had been a week filled with treaty discussions and burgeoning hope, Madara and others had returned to their seasonal village to safely escort the women, children, and harvest back to the fortress. Madara had looked forward to spending the winter convincing his kin and clan of the possibility of finally achieving peace, and also figuring out how to implement the newly-invented wonder of indoor plumbing.

They found death and rot, instead.

The adults had been brutally slaughtered, their bodies twisted from bones shattered in multiple places, and skin hanging like tattered ribbons, like someone had tried to artfully skin them alive. Madara, long used to brutal battle deaths, had never seen such wanton destruction. Disturbingly, the wounds on the men had been _identical._

Worse, there had been thirty-three Uchiha women, over a dozen who had been in early to mid stages of pregnancy, and all were slain. Of the eighteen children, ranging between newborn to ten years of age, only four had been found – two infants beneath six months of age, their throats slit and their eyes and organs consumed by roaming animals, and the two eldest, girls who had just been shy of seeing their tenth birthdays. They had tried to defend their clan, if the weapons clutched in their hands or fallen on the ground beside tattered bodies had been any indication, but the Uchiha clan didn't train their girls to fight. In less than a week, an entire generation had been utterly destroyed.

Madara sent one man to their winter fortress to relay the news, and then he, his brother, and nine others followed the trail of destruction without rest for an entire day, and the trail of destruction led them directly to the Senju. Without stopping to demand an explanation, Madara and the others threw themselves at the Senju with weapons raised.

"That's _my_ kill," Tobirama muttered angrily as Natsumi knelt at Izuna's head. Her hands were already glowing green as she placed them flat on his chest, one on each side of the sword. Izuna's arms twitched as her heavy breasts nearly smothered him. What blood he had left in his body was filling his face a bright red of embarrassment.

Natsumi's answering smile was only slightly less deadly than her sister's. "It's not a kill if your target trips and falls on your blade, Senju."

Tobirama's face burned as bright as Izuna's, although it was in anger. "He did not _trip!_ "

Izuna, metaphorically faced with deciding which was more embarrassing (being clumsy enough to trip and fall on his enemy's blade, or his enemy being skilled enough to successfully land a mortal blow), decided that he would much rather sacrifice his dignity than acknowledge the skill of his enemy. "I did too trip!"

Tobirama waved at the ground they stood on. It was a seasonal flood plane beside the Naka River. It was flat without any rocks, bushes, or large clamps of grass. "You did _not_!"

"Did too!"

"Did not!"

Natsumi shifted her chest lower so that Izuna's voice was too muffled to argue back. "Do you want your sword back, or do I get it to keep it?" she asked Tobirama with a husky purr in her voice. When Tobirama wrapped his hand around the hilt, her voice took on a more serious tone. "Pull it out gently; stop when I tell you. I have to heal around the blade so he doesn't drown in his blood."

"Would you like some help?" Hashirama called. "Because I'm really good at the Mystic Palm."

Izuna's arms flailed, although not with much strength, given his blood loss and the sword _in his damn chest_. The muffled sounds were definitely a refusal on his part, as well as a few choice insults. May the Sage of the Six Paths preserve Madara – his brother was a fool.

"That's rather rude," Hashirama declared. "And if you really did trip, then clearly Tobirama didn't mean to accidentally-nearly kill you."

Tobirama bristled. "I _did_ too mean to kill him."

Madara wasn't secretly too sure that Izuna wasn't more deliberate than Hashirama or Tobirama actually suspected. Madara's attack on the Senju had been motivated by anger and sadness. Izuna had been motivated by rage and sorrow.

Hashirama turned back to Madara. "Truce? At least until we figure out who we're supposed to kill in all of this?"

Madara hadn't really wanted to kill the Senju – they had just been an easy target to blame. "Sure." They both looked at Shinzou. Then Madara shuddered in horror as her stomach began rippling and moving, like a monster caught beneath her skin. Shinzou merely grunted and gently pressed a fist into her side.

Hashirama cocked his head to the side, eyes wide with curiosity as he studied Shinzou. Like the Uchiha women, Senju women wore a _lot_ more clothes than the Inuzuka; the later into their pregnancy they progressed, the more likely they were sequestered into the women's quarters. Without a wife, Hashirama was as unlikely as Madara to ever have seen such an advanced state of pregnancy. Izuna, whose wife had been pregnant with their third child, would've been much less shocked by Shinzou, but currently couldn't see anything other than Natsumi's chest. "Was – was that an elbow?" Hashirama's voice was hushed in reverence.

"Yes. And a pair of knees. Eyes up here, Senju." She pointed at her face. "Stop staring at my torso."

Hashirama's frown bordered on a pout as he made a show of sheathing his weapon. "If you didn't want anyone staring, you should put on a shirt, or something."

"I wear what I wear for _my_ comfort, not for anyone else's." Shinzou raised her chin in a defiant challenge as she turned to Madara. "Do _you_ have a complaint about my wardrobe, or are you and your men grown up enough to sit with us around a fire without fighting over whose cock is bigger? I've got a measurer in my pack somewhere. We could settle the score once and for all."

Madara looked up at the skies. They were starting to darken as the sun dipped below the line of trees. Mid autumn days were yet warm and bright, but the approaching night would get cold. " _I_ don't care if you freeze, Inuzuka," he replied. "You're a big girl. You can take care of yourself." And besides, it wasn't the size of one's personal tools that mattered – it was all in how it was used.

He didn't look to see what his clansmen did as he leaped over the ravine, crossed the field they had clashed in, and knelt at the puddle of blood that formed beneath Izuna. He refused to look at Hashirama's younger rat of a brother as he studied Natsumi's glowing hands with his Sharingan-bright gaze. Like Hashirama, her chakra manipulated cells in rapidly reproducing. He watched as she knit capillaries shut and fused flesh together as centimeter by centimeter, Tobirama slid his blade out. Unlike Hashirama, the base of Natsumi's healing chakra were two different colors, the famous gold of the Uzumaki – well renowned for being the cause of the Uzumaki clan's long life and rapid wound regeneration – mingling with the blue of Yang Release to form the green. Rumor had it that the current head of the Inuzuka clan had been sired by an Uzumaki. Evidently, so had the Clan Head's little sister.

"Interesting," he murmured softly as he allowed his Sharingan to fade. Without the enhancement of his Bloodline Limit, he caught only the slightest glimmer of gold, closest at the base of her skin where she released the chakra. Aside from the fact that she was able to heal – something so rare that Hashirama's ability _without_ the blood of the Uzumaki running through his veins was considered nothing short of miraculous – Madara had never been so close to any Inuzuka woman to realize that they had _claws_. "Are you feeling better?" he asked his brother, pretending that he wasn't using his proximity as an excuse to study a non-pregnant Inuzuka woman up close. They really were as animalistic as the stories said.

Izuna raised a steady hand and gave him a thumb's up.

Well, his brother always did consider himself a boob man.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's note:** I enjoy exploring the clans from pre-Konoha, trying to figure out their individual territories and cultures. Unfortunately, aside from the Uchiha, Inuzuka, and Senju clans, the only other ones that get their own guest appearances are the Nara and Uzumaki clans. (Mito shows up in the later chapters.)

* * *

When Shinzou had demanded that the Uchiha and Senju join the Inuzuka women around a fire, Madara hadn't realized that she meant it literally. It didn't take long to gather a bunch of summer-dead wood to build a decently-sized bonfire, and even less time for Izuna to light it with a Grand Fireball when he should've instead saved his strength. But if his brother felt well enough to posture in front of the Senju despite being stabbed through the chest just an hour earlier, then Madara would hold his tongue.

After what they had seen, three days prior, after Izuna had gathered up the remains of his wife while his vision burned with the newly-born Mangekyo, Madara would let his brother take any satisfaction from wherever it could be found. Short of actually getting back his two missing children, Izuna was not likely to ever gain any more real satisfaction in this life.

Between his men and the Senju, they outnumbered the Inuzuka women three to one. That didn't include the ninken. Madara initially hadn't thought them worthy of being included. That was before he realized just how _huge_ they were.

When the ninken had surrounded the perimeters of the battle site, crouching low and poised to attack, Madara had underestimated their size, even with his enhanced vision. He had seen domesticated dogs bred for work – they were large. He had seen wolves in the wild, and even fought them off in the winter, when the fenced livestock meant to provide for the clan looked like easy pickings when wild prey was scarce. The wolves had been large.

Domesticated working dogs and wolves didn't compare to these ninken, especially when two dragged a recently killed Nara deer to the fire. The ninken were nearly the same size of the deer. Another ninken dragged an actual Nara behind, and the Nara, renowned for their intelligence, hung from the ninken's mouth like limp rag. The better for which to look less like food or prey, and to look more like an obedient puppy.

The Nara was old, his hair steel-gray and face lined with wrinkles. He blinked at the Senju and Uchiha surrounding him, firelight glinting off the steel of their armor, and then craned his neck to look at the half-naked Inuzuka women lounging around the fire. "Oh man, this sucks," he declared, rubbing the nape of his neck. The ninken that had dragged him over to the fire approached Shinzou, wagging its tail and looking remarkably smug.

"Look at what the dog dragged in," Shinzou said, her voice flat. "Bad boy," she told the ninken, even as she scratched him behind the ears. "Bad, bad boy. Next time, leave it where you find it."

Natsumi reached over and patted the Nara's head as if he was a puppy. "Look on the bright side, Shikataro-san," she said happily, "you have been saved the effort of trying to hunt my sister and I down to demand payment for the deer. Sorry about that. We needed the extra meat because these bozos here," she jerked her thumb at Madara, "forgot to pack adequate supplies for dinner." The fact that Hashirama had been able to grow a small seedling to a full grown chestnut tree heavy with nuts that were now being roasted in the bonfire was left pointedly _unsaid_ , and Madara could feel the arrogant satisfaction radiating brighter than the bonfire's flames. He would've stabbed Hashirama on principle, but that would've raised Shinzou's ire, and he didn't want her alien, independently-moving torso any closer to his sight line.

Madara busied himself trying to remember if he had ever before met the elusive Head of the Nara clan. He knew that they had been close to the Nara clan's territory. He kept his gaze trained on Nara Shikataro as Natsumi flexed her fingers until it seemed like her nails had gained extra length.

… did it surprise him that the Inuzuka were animals enough to use their claws to skin animals? No, no, it didn't.

"I am disgusted," Izuna said, unable to tear his gaze away from Natsumi's brutal skinning and gutting of the carcass.

"Oooooooh, wow," said Hashirama, eyes wide with curiosity.

Tobirama twitched, narrowed eyes shifting from Natsumi's bloody hands to Hashirama clapping in delight, and back to Natsumi, clearly not willing to share in his brother's bright-eyed interest, but also desperately not wanting to have anything in common with Izuna.

"I want the antlers," Shikataro declared, as he rolled onto his stomach and pillowed his head on his arms. He yawned. "And the heart."

Natsumi pouted. "But the heart is the best part."

"If I have to suffer the indignity of being dragged backwards through the brush, the least you can do is feed me the best part of _my_ animal."

"Fine. Heart and antlers. Want my first born son, too?" Natsumi demanded.

The Nara lifted his face. Some dirt clung to his wrinkled cheek. "I already _have_ your first-born son, vicious little energetic monstrosity that he is. And Shinzou's first-born son. And another four or five or however many Inuzuka male offspring that you gals abandoned in my forest, because they move around so fast I think I've already counted the same kid two or three times. Pawn your male offspring onto some other unsuspecting clan, next time." The Nara indicated Madara with a limp-wrist wave. "Like them. I'm sure they'd appreciate a bunch of high-strung, impulsive, hyperactive little demons from hell. The Uchiha would never notice the difference."

Izuna looked highly offended with the idea of being gifted an Inuzuka son, especially when he didn't know if his two missing children were dead or alive. Nonetheless, Izuna was much more polite than Madara, and much better at holding in his temper. Right now, at least. "No, thank you."

"You sure? They're really great for herding deer and sniffing out the best mushrooms and herbs. There's just something about that Inuzuka nose that makes them remarkable cooks – they're great at flavoring food. And if you work really hard on disciplining them, they can even be housebroken."

The hallmark of Uchiha cooking techniques, even among Uchiha women, was their ability to _flambé_ everything. Meals frequently doubled up as charcoal fire starts. The Uchiha clan was nothing if not experts at making _everything_ do double-duty. "I believe we're fine," Izuna said, crossing his arms in front of himself.

"Hmm." Shikataro scratched his chin. He focused an eye, every bit as curved and narrow as Natsumi's eyes, on Madara. The other eye was milky-white with thick cataracts. "After the children you lost, you might want to consider adoption."

Madara felt his spine go ramrod stiff. He was equally aware of Shinzou, Hashirama, and other Inuzuka women focusing on him. "What would you know about the children we lost?"

"The South Sea raiders hit _a lot_ of shinobi clans, all in transit or in preparation for winter," the Nara replied. "The first to be hit were the Akimichi. They were bringing a wagon train to the Autumn Suna Bazaars. The South Sea raiders not only stole the younger children, but enough supplies to survive the trek back across the ocean. That was a week ago."

Madara hadn't heard of any attacks on the clan of merchant-ninjas. Then again, word wouldn't have reached this far into the heart of Fire Country if the first attack took place in River Country. People would've been heading to the Bazaar for final trading with the nomadic clans of Wind before winter struck, and since the Bazaar wasn't due to start until next week, then the word didn't have much chance to travel backwards.

As for the Akimichi clan – they normally had the strength to protect their trains, but they didn't have the speed or stamina to pursue attackers long-distance. If they needed to hunt down long-distance enemies who wronged them, they reached out to the Inuzuka clan through Aburame clan. The insular and creepy Aburame clan was normally content to remain in the swamp-marshes that crossed Fire Country into River Country, defending their ancestral lands against invasion and keeping the locals safe from the nomadic warlords of Wind. The only times they left their territory was to track and to trade. Bringing back targets was a task typically left with the Inuzuka, who paired well with the Aburame.

"From what we could gather," Shikataro continued, "the raiders bypassed the Aburame clan, skirting around the marshes, and struck the Senju's rice fields, three days ago."

The Senju women would've been busy gathering autumn harvests for their winter stronghold, guarded by an elite force of men. The Senju had been killed at the same time as the Uchiha had been killed.

"How did they strike the Senju women, and our women at the same time?" Izuna demanded. "Ours have been dead for three days, also."

"That's where Shikataro is wrong. The invaders split forces when they reached the shores of Fire, into five groups," Shinzou replied. Her eyes were focused on the flames, her gaze distant. "The South Sea raiders hit the shores of Fire Country two weeks ago. From there, they split into multiple groups, and headed inland in separate directions. Their paths are very deliberate, like they knew exactly who they wanted." She took a deep breath. One hand, resting on her raised knee, curled into a fist. Blood dribbled through her clenched fingers as the claws pierced skin. "We had left our eldest and youngest, those who didn't have the energy to make the trek to the Bazaars, ten days ago. Five days ago, my sister and I caught the stench of their death on the wind. One group of five hit the Akimichi. One group of five hit the Uchiha. One group of five hit the Senju. One group of five hit the Inuzuka. One group of five hit the Sarutobi. After each group struck, they started back tracking back to their longboats."

Shinzou lifted her eyes to meet Madara's. They held the promise of death. "They haven't reached their longboats, yet. They don't seem to be running very fast."

"They can't," said Natsumi. "The children move at a slower rate." She reached over and jabbed Tobirama in the shoulder with one bloody claw. "Hey, sharpen me some green willow branches so you can cook the meat over the fire." She flashed him a wicked smile. "I prefer to eat my meat raw, but that I realize my guests may have different preferences."

Rubbing his shoulder and shooting her a nasty look, Tobirama retreated from the fire. Madara heard him grabbing a few Senju to do what Natsumi had demanded. Shinzou was silent while they waited for Tobirama's return.

No one local within Fire and the surrounding countries, as far as Madara knew, were _dumb_ or _suicidal_ enough to attack the Inuzuka clan head-on. The Elemental nations, as a whole, felt that women were the weaker sex. Only the Aburame and the Uzumaki clans were as known for their female kunoichi as their male shinobi, but they were bizarre. The Hatake clan didn't count, as they were a samurai clan, where women were as proficient with their white chakra and sabers as the men were. The Inuzuka clan, however, was strictly matriarchal, so they had no men to defend them. They didn't _want_ men to defend their clan. Rumors had it that the Inuzuka women killed their male offspring, that's how much they _didn't want Inuzuka men._

Evidently, they foisted male offspring onto the Nara, via child abandonment in the Nara Forests. Which, in the world of the Warring Era, was a kind way of disposing unwanted children. The Nara clan, at least, didn't have to worry about keeping their Bloodline Limits pure, seeing as how their shadow techniques didn't rely on Bloodline Limits.

Madara turned his thoughts back to the memory of his slaughtered clanspeople, a shiver of horror racing up and down his spine as he thought, _five people._ The ten men he had left with the women and children should've been enough to fend off, even destroy, five South Sea raiders.

The bodies of fighting men and defending women had been mangled. They hadn't fallen in battle – there was every indication that their deaths were designed to be slow, long, and brutal. Shattered bones, skin sliced to ribbon, the eerie identical placement of broken bones and lacerations… And from the look on Hashirama's face, the Uchiha clanspeople hadn't been the only ones refused a swift, clean death.

Natsumi was efficient and clean as she dressed the deer. She was swift in removing the intestines, the lower parts of all four limbs, and the head, which she wrapped up in the skin and dragged off to the perimeter of the battle-come-campsite. Natsumi directed three of her clanswomen to divvy up the spoils for the ninken before she returned to the carcass. She didn't even need chakra-enhanced strength to break open the ribcage. Madara silently admired the ripple of the thick muscles that corded Natsumi's arms – they were much lovelier to look at then her heavy swaying breasts, and a much safer topic to mentally dwell upon than the brutal deaths of his clanspeople.

When Tobirama returned with sharpened spears made from fresh willow branches, he also brought a leather bucket filled with fresh water, which he set beside Natsumi. "For cleaning your hands," he muttered.

The red in Tobirama's cheeks wasn't a reflection of the fire, Madara noted. But Tobirama's obvious discomfort didn't stop Tobirama from skewering thick, heavy chunks of venison and passing them over for people to hold in the flames to sear to their own preference of rare to well-done.

Madara liked his meat as cooked thoroughly as a hardboiled egg. He couldn't stand the taste of fresh blood. As the meat sizzled, Hashirama pulled the roasted chestnuts from the fire, cooling them with a wind jutsu ( _cheater_ ), and splitting the shells with the hilt of his kunai. He tossed the roasted nutmeats into another leather bucket.

"They can't run fast," said the Nara, stretching to snatch one of the roasted nutmeats. He juggled it between his hands, huffing and puffing to cool it down even more. "Not if they have well over fifty children to drag along. How many fighters are you going to need to take out twenty-five raiders?"

Shinzou's eyes fluttered shut. "A group of five struck my clan, but there was only one scent tied up with all the death. Only one person killed everyone. The same is true for the Uchiha, Senju and Sarutobi clans. Two were responsible for the deaths in the Akimichi clan."

Izuna's eyes were spiraling red, shifting erratically into the Mangekyo. "You mean to tell me _one_ person slaughtered over forty adults?" While Madara's Mangekyo had bloomed a few years ago with the death of their father, Izuna's was so new that he still had difficulty controlling it. "How is that level of power _possible?_ "

According to tradition, the Mangyko was born when you killed your loved one – or best friend, depending on which translation one went with. Apparently, feeling responsible for the death of your best friend/loved one also counted, in Izuna's case. Which Madara found odd, because there were many Uchihas over the years who had felt responsible for the death of their best friends/loved ones, and yet he and Izuna was the first to awaken the Mangekyo in the last four generations. Someone really messed up on the translations, somewhere.

Nara raised his eyebrows silently as he studied Izuna's eyes.

Could Madara have single-handedly wiped out ten men and thirty women who had comparable strength of the clanspeople killed? He could, he realized with a chill, but the personal cost of chakra and stamina would be catastrophically higher. He would've collapsed from exhaustion twenty meters from where the bodies were left to rot, and slept for a week.

Shinzou glanced around the fire. "But I think, between what we have consolidated here, it should be enough to take out the raiders."

Madara twitched as Hashirama tilted his head in thought. Shinzou was bold to assume that the Uchiha – or even the Senju – would join forces with her in hunting down the raiders and rescuing the kidnapped children, no matter what she had said when she crashed their (hunting/battling) party.

Natsumi shoved four spears with dangling chunks of raw meat into Madara's hands. "I know what you're thinking," she said with a low growl. "You're thinking that you'll be able to waltz in and destroy the raiders, la-di-dah, and then release the children. Do you have any plans of returning them to their respective clans? The Akimichi clan children are comfortable with us – they know the Inuzuka clan. They won't trust to go anywhere with you, or the Senju. The Sarutobi children might agree to go with the Senju, but they wouldn't go near you Uchiha even if you're on fire and they had the bucket of water. The Inuzuka girls will have absolutely _nothing_ to do with either the Senju, or the Uchiha."

At her words, Hashirama's face tilted downward as a worried expression crossed his face. Hearing how the children of other clans – and clans that weren't even _rivals_ to the Senju – would be too fearful to trust their safety with the Senju, when Hashirama had talked to Madara a week prior about the possibility of offering sanctuary and friendship to other clans, was no doubt throwing a cloud over what had otherwise been the only good thing to come out of being gone while their loved ones were getting slaughtered.

"We," said Madara, refusing to think any further of what he had been doing when his sister-in-law was brutally murdered, "would never hurt any children."

"Bullshit, Uchiha," Tobirama cut in with a growl. "I still remember how four grown Uchiha men surrounded my seven year old brother and cut him down like a _dog_."

" _That_ was on the battlefield, and he was considered a fellow warrior, no matter his age or actual strength. That's entirely different from unarmed children locked in cages or chained up by South Sea raiders." Although South Sea raiders had been driven out of the Elemental Nations more than half a century before, it was for a good reason – children had long been considered a source of food and pleasure for the native islanders that the South Sea raiders liked to sell the children to.

The Nara clan head turned to Shinzou. "Are you quite certain that you don't want at least four of my people? While they would endlessly bitch about the brutal travel pace you set, I guarantee my men won't constantly bring up old bygones and grudges."

"True," said Shinzou with a languid shrug of her shoulders. "But I would like to think that the heads of the Uchiha and the Senju clans can set aside their differences and be mature about working together. After all, that's why they gathered together last week, isn't it? To set aside their differences? Oh please, it wasn't a secret to this nose," she told Hashirama as he looked at her in surprise. "Clan heads of Uchiha and Senju gathered a week in one place _without_ bloodshed?"

"It was either a peace treaty, or a massive orgy," Natsumi said, scrubbing her hands clean in the provided bucket of water. "And since we didn't smell any sex happening, we figured it was probably a peace treaty."

Madara didn't really want to think of an orgy between the Uchiha clansmen and the Senju clansmen present. He _really_ didn't want to think of Tobirama or Hashirama naked… although he knew that Hashirama was the epitome of masculine health, and had a very beautiful set of arms and shoulders. "I'm sure," he began, doing his best to turn his thoughts away from _any_ nudity, "that we can continue what we started last week, setting aside old hurts and grudges, and work together to create a new future where the children of all clans can trust their safety in others in times of kidnapping."

The smile that Hashirama sent him from his side of the fire was brighter than the sun. Madara ignored that as easily as he ignored thoughts of nude orgies.

"There you go," Shinzou told the Nara, pressing her hands against her abdomen again as it rolled and wobbled, liquidly shifting from side to side.

Shikataro's eyes were sharp. "I hope you haven't included yourself in any plan to defeat the raiders. You're due to give birth any day now."

Madara also hoped that Shinzou hadn't planned on fighting. Everyone knew that the chakra of pregnant women was weakened and unreliable.

As if suspecting his thoughts, Shinzou shot Madara a glare that would've scorched his hair if she had laced her eyes with chakra. "I," she said with a haughty lift of her chin, "am quite capable of leading my clan into battle, and coming out of it unscathed, regardless of my physical condition."

Shikataro, with a lazy ease of an elderly man who was quite experienced with weathering the scorn of the Inuzuka, and was hardly intimidated by her posturing, declared, "I'm more concerned about you going into labor while in battle."

"Good." Shinzou's words were clipped with anger. "The brat is a week overdue. I'm ready to serve an eviction notice."

He shrugged. "My offer still stands."

"Send your men to the Sarutobi clan to explain what happened, and that we'll be returning with survivors after we rescue them."

"Very well. I'll leave them at the Sarutobi clan's holdings. If you take the Akimichi children there, my men can accompany them the rest of the way to their village, and that'll let you return to your wintering huts sooner."

With those details decided, they focused on completing their dinner of venison and roasted chestnuts.

"These are good," said Shikataro, helping himself to another nutmeat. "Such a shame that the chestnuts require an ungodly amount of effort to prepare."

"Is there anything else we should discuss?" Natsumi asked her sister, pointedly.

Shinzou didn't even bother looking up from her venison, which was almost as well-done as Madara's. "I think that about covers it. We can't make plans on the enemies until we get closer."

Natsumi clicked her tongue and shook her head. "That baby's gotta hurry up and get here – your pregnancy brain has just been awful. Fine, I'll say it for you, for I am a wonderfully thoughtful sister, always looking out for you, my dear." Her smile took on a predatory edge as she slid close to Madara. Without hesitating, she looped a gloriously muscled arm around his neck and dragged him uncomfortably close to her bare breasts. With her other arm, she crooked her finger in a come-hither movement at Hashirama. Madara wanted to push himself free, but that would've required him to make physical contact with Natsumi's torso. And her bosom was so grotesquely large, he was pretty sure that there wasn't any possible way to avoid _not_ touching them.

"Clan leaders, we have to have a brief discussion on _expectations_ around here, just so that we're all on the same page. I'm sure your men would appreciate hearing it more from you than from me, at least."

When Hashirama moved closer, he too was dragged one-armed to Natsumi's side. Unlike Madara, his face burned bright red. "This hardly seems proper, Inuzuka-san," Hashirama declared, keeping his body stiff. "I am _quite_ uncomfortable with this."

" _I'm_ not," Natsumi replied with a flash of her teeth. She wiggled her torso, which made her breasts sway. _Now_ Madara felt the flush of heat across his face. He tried to glare at Izuna, just to get his gaze anywhere that didn't have a pierced nipple. Damn woman could put an out eye out with those bar bells. Izuna, on the other hand, looked highly amused at Madara's discomfort.

Oh yeah, Izuna already had a first-hand experience of getting up close and personal with Natsumi's chest.

"As I was saying," Natsumi said, " _none_ of the Inuzuka women are uncomfortable with their bodies. We happen to be very comfortable in our own skin."

"Boy howdy," Shikataro muttered as he ripped his venison apart with his teeth.

"We also happen to enjoy sex. _Some_ of us," here, Natsumi sent her sister a pointed look, "even enjoy sex with _men_."

"And you have way better stamina than the men, too," Shikataro added.

"Thank you, but that's not an impressive achievement, in the great grand scheme of biology. Anyway, after we get our children back, there's the strong possibility that my clanswomen might want to engage in victory sex. Hell, they may even want a roll in the bushes before we get the children. You know, when we have to stop for a breather. And that's fine, too, if any of your clansmen are up for a roll in the bushes. However, if your men are up for it, and my women are not, and your men force themselves onto my women, I _will_ know who the perpetrator is by his personal stench, and I will rip his cock off with my _bare hands_ , and jam it down his throat until he chokes to death on it."

Natsumi slid her arms away from their necks, and then carefully poked Madara and Hashirama in the nose with one claw. The very same hands that she had used to skin and dismantle a deer. It was terrifyingly easy to imagine her effortlessly neutering men. "Are we clear?" she asked with a sweet voice.

Hashirama rubbed his nose. "As clear as a summer blue sky," he replied, wide-eyed. "I shall let my men know to keep their hands to themselves in regards to unwilling parties."

"I require the same for my men," Madara said, crossing his arms before himself, and trying hard not to press his knees together. "I don't want any pushy Inuzuka woman pawing at my men, especially if they don't want to be touched." He really didn't want to see what would happen if some woman was stupid enough to try seducing his brother.

"I wouldn't ask anything of your men that I haven't already told my women."


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's note:** Hahaha. Um. I forgot to update in time. Oh well.

* * *

There was a brief moment where Tobirama and Izuna argued over what the nightwatch would be like.

"Don't bother including us," Natsumi declared with a yawn as she and her clanswomen pulled leather ponchos out of the packs that the ninken carried, and wrapped themselves up in the ponchos. "There isn't any potential targets coming after us for over forty kilometers." She curled up in a tight ball and pressed herself into the flank of the ninken whose pack she had raided, using the haunches as a makeshift pillow. The ninken curled around her, resting his massive head against her knees.

Madara briefly thought about his bedroll, still in the pack they had left behind at their orchards, along with the dead, to remove any unnecessary weight that would slow down their travels. He regretted that in hindsight, since the nights were getting cold, and there wouldn't be any spare supplies for the Uchiha children. However, if the trail and the Nara's report remained true, the raiders and captured children were making their way through the country to the southern beaches of Fire Country. That would bring the Uchiha and Senju clansmen much closer to the Uzumaki clan's territory, and Hashirama would no doubt use his silver tongue to talk Mito out of whatever supplies they needed before they had to head north, for home.

Provided they reached their children before the raiders set sail.

Madara had never crossed the sea before. He had no idea how to sail. He was under the impression that there was a lot of sea sickness? He prayed they would reach the children before such happened.

When it seemed like there was a mutual agreement reached (one Senju and one Uchiha would take up watch, rotating with another clansman every two hours), Madara wrapped his cloak tightly around himself, and laid down on the unforgiving ground with his back to the fire. If he had to be awakened abruptly, he wouldn't be blinded by any remaining light cast by the coals. He would fall sleep easily – he had long learned how to sleep easily, no matter the death he witnessed during the day – but he couldn't guarantee the same for his brother.

Madara wasn't married – he had become clan head before he was married, and the clan elders felt that placed him in the perfect position to cement a political union that would strengthen their clan. Izuna, however, was under no such expectations from clan elders. Five years ago, Izuna married his childhood sweetheart, Uchiha Honami, and Madara couldn't have been happier in life. Izuna had achieved his own little island of love and peace, with his wife and children.

And now that island had been destroyed, swept away utterly in a sea of blood.

Izuna chose to take first watch. As Madara watched his brother trudge out of the clearing, taking up position in the chestnut tree that Hashirama had grown for dinner, he knew that his brother wouldn't be sleeping well, if at all, until he was able to rescue his children, or light their funeral pyres.

He hoped, for the health of his brother's soul, there would be no more funeral pyres this month. Izuna already had to light a funeral pyre for two bodies, one who lived before she died, and the other who died before he could live.

oOoOoOo

Shinzou was ruthless in waking everyone up for their journey, before dawn – false dawn at that – had even started. It didn't help that Madara shattered the stick she used with which to poke him awake.

"Do you mind?" he demanded, glaring up at her. She still wore the poncho she had slipped on last night, which effectively covered her entire torso from view. He still saw the outline of her pregnancy, could still see the occasional rolling movement, but that was much more tolerable and much less traumatizing.

"Look alive, Uchiha," Shinzou told him. "The raiders are at least eighty kilometers away from us, and I hope your armor isn't going to slow you down. My women and I refuse to pace ourselves just because you're dragging useless weight."

Armor that protected vital organs wasn't exactly what he would consider _useless weight_ , but then again, he couldn't exactly expect a half-naked woman to understand, especially when the Inuzuka clan didn't get into as many battles as the Uchiha clan did. (He ignored the voice that quietly remarked that the Inuzuka clan probably had more sense than the Uchiha clan did.)

"We'll be fine," Madara replied. "Don't come whining to my men if your women freeze or shred their exposed limbs on the underbrush while we run. We won't be making any stops just so you can do some patchwork on your skin."

"Children, please," Hashirama grumbled from where he was dumping a bunch of chestnuts on the smoldering coals for a quick breakfast. "It's too early in the morning for squabbling."

Nara Shikataro only grumbled and rolled towards the flames, a welcome respite in the chilly morning. Then he groaned when Shinzou ruthlessly kicked him in the ribs.

"You were supposed to leave last night. What're you still doing here?"

"Sleeping. Please, like I wanted to wander off in the dark. I could've tripped and broken my neck, and then my daughter would've become clan leader." After a pause, as he slowly drew his knees up from beneath himself and sloppily rolled upright, he added, "Oh damn, I just missed a perfectly good opportunity to retire. What a drag. Is there some tea to soothe my battered soul and ribs?"

Shinzou dropped a pack of tea leaves at Hashirama's feet. "Since you're on the cook fire, I'm assuming you're in charge of everything."

Hashirama threw an empty leather bucket at Madara. "Since I'm in charge, I'm assigning you water duty."

"Fine, whatever." Just because he was Head of the Uchiha Clan, Madara never considered himself up above doing manual labor or the drudgery of camp duty. And besides, if he did try anything that would be misconstrued as posturing, Shinzou looked grumpy enough to ask him if he wanted to measure his cock against Hashirama's, because she had a measurer and would be happy to settle the score once and for all.

oOoOoOo

This far south in Fire Country, most of the trees were deciduous. In mid-autumn, the green leaves had shifted into the full spectrum of colors – waves of gold, red, and orange covered the landscape as far as the eye could see, broken up only where villages had cleared the trees away to plant crops. And as they ran through the forests, as they passed the fields of golden wheat and golden corn, the spindly lengths of pumpkin and squash vines, the orderly orchids of plums and nuts, Izuna thought it was a beautiful day.

But he didn't find it in himself to care.

The Inuzuka sisters – hell hounds, Madara had muttered, just outside of their sharp hearing – were in the lead. On either side of them was a ninken, matching their brutal pace with graceful, leaping bounds. Natsumi, a full head taller than Shinzou, was every bit as graceful as the ninken. Shinzou lumbered, swaying side to side, like an avalanche that had hit its stride and set to wipe out everything in its wide path. Shinzou kept her poncho on, and the only exposed flesh were her long legs that tapered into a pair of small feet protected by thin leather sandals. Natsumi had tucked her poncho into the pack was strapped to her ninken, a monstrosity the size of a small country that answered to Umeboshi. Natsumi wore a pair of sandals similar to her sister's, and a leather girdle-skirt that sat low on her wide hips and ended at mid-thigh.

Izuna should've felt scandalized, but he didn't care. He was surprised to realize that Shinzou wasn't the only Inuzuka woman who was pregnant – two other women were clearly expecting, but didn't appear to be as far along as their Head.

Madara and Hashirama had allowed the sisters to take lead – something something nose stick your sensory abilities where the sun don't shine, Tobirama, we can tell where people have been, and they're outside your range anyway – and followed after them. They were both still outfitted their armor, as the other Uchiha and Senju men were, and Izuna could see the heavy sweat that saturated the cloth underarmor.

The other Inuzuka women deferred to their clan leader and leader's sister – it appeared that Shinzou and Natsumi had equal authority despite their age difference – and followed without any problems; the two pregnant Inuzuka kept pace in the center of the groups of men, and Madara told himself he shouldn't feel irritated if some of his men seemed more protective towards them than they otherwise should've been. The remaining four Inuzuka women branched around the groups, in the back flanks. The six Inuzuka woman, like Natsumi, had shed their ponchos. Only two others had animals painted on their torsos – one had horses, the other had butterflies.

Or moths. Or just fancy dust bunnies. It was hard to tell; Inuzuka Boshi's artistic talents were nonexistent. She was just younger than Natsumi, with a bosom that was as lacking as her art skills, but had the same admirable stamina as her clanswomen, her skin barely damp with sweat.

Izuna was beginning to see the merit of being half-naked. He was aware of the rivulets of sweat running down his back. He was going to have one hell of a rash if they didn't manage to find a place to take a bath when they settled down for the night. And he wasn't going to ask for a break. If a _woman_ – especially one that was nine months pregnant – could run cross-country without a break, then so could he.

Their first opportunity for a quick rest happened when they hit a ravine that stretched wide and deep. At the bottom of the ravine was the Hirohiro River. It was too steep to scale the walls, and too wide to safely leap to the other side, even if they had a decent running start.

"There used to be a rope bridge here, somewhere," Natsumi said, looking both directions.

"Bah. Probably got burned down," Shinzou replied. "The Shimura are jerks like that."

"The mountains drop into a valley ten kilometers east, we could cross there, but we'll lose however much time it takes to travel twenty kilometers," Madara said, gesturing east with a sweep of his hand. It had taken them four hours to travel nearly seventy kilometers, and that had been relatively easy country to travel – land that had been cleared and farmed for generations. Hitting the minor mountain range surrounded with old growth forest would dramatically decrease their travel speed, especially if they had to detour.

Natsumi put her hands on both hips, and took a deep breath. Izuna felt her chakra flare minutely, like the swell and pop of a bubble. "The group that hit the Sarutobi clan has already reached the beaches. Two other groups aren't far behind. The group that hit the Akimichi clan is furthest back, west and north of us by about sixty kilometers."

Hashirama lifted his face to the sun, frowning slightly. "How far away from the shore are we?" he asked Madara.

"We have at least a hundred kilometers to go."

Hashirama's eyes went wide as he looked at Natsumi. "Damn. How good is your nose?"

"I'm one of the best," Natsumi replied. "Almost as good as my sister, but," she shrugged, "biology."

Shinzou snorted into the collar of her poncho, "Strong odors make my morning sickness worse. I haven't been able to do any decent tracking for the last nine months. Come on, we don't have time to rest when we got an unexpected extra twenty kilometers to cover."

Hashirama immediately clapped his hands together, slapped them flat against the ground, and coaxed a thick, sturdy vine to shoot out of the earth, through the air, and into the trees on the other side of the ravine. "We rest for thirty minutes," he declared, crossing his arms in front of himself. The brief pause did nothing to stop the sweat dribbling down his face, soaking his armor.

Shinzou glared at the vine as if she expected it to bite her. Natsumi poked the vine with a claw; it was easily as thick as a grown man.

"Fifteen minutes," Shinzou replied with a growl.

Hashirama stepped directly against Shinzou, his armor brushing against her poncho as he loomed over her. "Thirty minutes. It took _one_ unknown person to utterly annihilate a dozen very skilled, very capable Senju clansmen. I don't know how many Inuzuka or Uchiha clanspeople were also killed, but I've got a feeling that we're dealing with some freakishly _strong_ fighters. The raiders have long been renowned for their berserker style, and the demonic strength and stamina that comes with the berserker style makes them nearly unstoppable. If lore is accurate to truth, _all_ of us are going to be pushed to our limits to defeat them. Pushing ourselves to get to the seashore in time isn't going to do us any good if we're too damn exhausted to take back our children. We need to be able to conserve our strength, and actually think of what we're going to do when we finally reach them."

Natsumi made a fist and smashed it into an open palm. "We're going to squash them before they even realize we're there, rip out their throats, dismantle their bodies, piss on their insides, throw the pieces into the longboats, and set the whole thing on fire."

Izuna silently approved.

Hashirama stared at Natsumi for a long moment, his expression torn between agreement and horror at her bloodthirsty description. "That sounds like a tremendous way to get revenge on the clanspeople who were slain," he began carefully, "but we still have no idea what we're up against. If it were me, I would expect retaliation, and I would set the captured children up in a deathtrap that would leave them alive, but kill anyone trying to rescue them."

Natsumi wrinkled her nose, as Shinzou studied Hashirama with narrowed eyes. "Very well," Shinzou replied. "We rest and recover for thirty minutes, and work out some basic plans."

Izuna desperately hoped that their basic plans still included ripping out throats, dismemberment, pissing on the carcasses, and fire. He was Uchiha; revenge was always best served with fire.

oOoOoOo

"Look at what we do know," Shinzou began, sitting crosslegged on the ground. Hashirama, Madara, Izuna, Tobirama, and Natsumi also sat on the ground; they formed a misshapen circle and faced each other. Shinzou had shed her poncho since the midmorning sun was starting to feel more intense. Madara was trying to be respectful and watch her while she spoke, while also _not_ trying to watch the tightening movement under her skin, with rigid muscles and wandering limbs – at one point, he saw the perfect imprint of a _foot_. It had been the size of his thumb. "We know that in these five groups, at least one is a warrior of catastrophic strength and skill. We can either assume that all five people in these groups hold equal strength, or that the single person who took out our clanspeople is the only warrior, and the rest were just support staff to carry supplies and children."

"If they're the legendary berserkers," Hashirama said, "it would be a single warrior." Because two berserkers in the same fight would be too deeply in their rage to recognize the other as an ally, and notoriously battled each other instead of their enemies. "But that's assuming that these even _are_ berserkers. It could be that they developed a whole new style and skill in the seventy years they've been gone from our continent."

"Don't over-think this," Natsumi said. "We could be here all day and into next week if you keep saying _but_ and _if._ "

Madara accepted a skin of water from one of his clansmen, and handed it to Izuna after taking several deep gulps of water. "We need to be able to scout and gather information on these raiders if we have any hopes of making a decent plan. Your nose can only provide so much information. We need a set of eyes and to actually see them in battle to know what they're capable of."

Tobirama had been tracing his fingers through the dirt – meaningless doodles, if it hadn't been the lance of chakra he kept sending through the dirt to map out their surroundings. "We should avoid battle," he said. "If we can ambush and kill them swiftly, before they have a chance to meet up with each other or to realize our presence, we'd decrease our own chances of loss."

"That," Madara replied, "would require us to accurately predict their path, circle around, lay traps, and set the ambush. No doubt they'll be expecting pursuit and will be watching their backs. In a foreign country, they'll be just as wary of their way forward."

"So say we set the trap," Natsumi said, "and they figure it out, they'll immediately be on the offensive, and then we're right back to open combat and the unknown of the other's abilities."

Madara leaned forward. "If we can get Uchiha eyes on their attack, we'll be able to get a better assessment of their abilities. What we need is a decoy."

Natsumi rubbed her chin. "Decoy?"

"Yes."

"Not _decoys_. As in, a single person, in one-on-one combat, with the raider?"

"Yes. There's a reason only one person took out our people, and the other four didn't. Why? Where were those other four when one person attacked your clan? What did your nose tell you?"

Natsumi and Shinzou exchanged a look. It was obvious to Madara that they hadn't put much thought into why four raiders didn't battle, while only one did. Natsumi's expression dipped into a thoughtful frown. "The four stayed half a kilometer away until the one fighter killed the adults."

"How did they know the fighter was finished? Did the fighter return to the four?"

Natsumi slowly shook her head. Her beads and caltrops clattered together from the movement. Madara briefly wondered how she managed to wear them without shredding the skin across her shoulders and breasts. "No. The four went to the fighter after the battle. Which implies that they had some way of signaling each other, or that one or more of the four is a sensor."

Tobirama swore under his breath. "If each group has a sensor, that would explain how they managed to find the villages, huts, and merchant trains when and where our children had the weakest security."

"That means we won't be able to successfully ambush them, either," Hashirama said. "They're going to know that we're coming, and they'll be able to plan accordingly."

"So," Madara continued, "we need to send a very small, targeted force against one group to better assess what we're up against. It needs to have at least three people. The decoy needs to have the strength and stamina to take on the fighter who was capable of single-handedly taking out ten adult men, and last long enough that the second person can get reliable, accurate intel on the raiders' skills and abilities, and then the third person can get the second person back to our main group, should the first person fall in battle. If the first person survives, they'll need assistance from at least two people to move fast, anticipating grave wounds. The third person needs to be a sensor or one of the Inuzuka women, so they can find the main group without any delays or running into other enemies."

"I'll do it," Natsumi said. "Be the decoy, that is." She glared defensively at Hashirama and Shinzou. "What? No, don't even think about it, buster," she told Shinzou. "You're in early stages of labor."

"I thought your contractions were getting more regular," Izuna said to Shinzou, and boy did Madara wish he could scrub the memory of those words out of his brain.

Natsumi ignored Izuna. "You," she pointed at Hashirama, "have wood release. We need to get you to the children, because you can use that," she indicated the vine that stretched across the ravine, "to create a barrier around the children, so they're not dragged into a battle or caught in a death trap. And you," she vaguely waved at Izuna and Madara, "well, you got the pinwheel eyes. I'm assuming that one of you gets to be the second person gathering the reliable, accurate information on skills and abilities." She squinted at Tobirama. "I don't know what to do about you, but I'm sure you can think of a way to make yourself useful. You could always hold my sister's hand while she gives birth."

Tobirama ground his teeth. "I can be the sensor."

"Good, now that we've got all that decided—"

"It is _not_ decided," Izuna cut in. "What makes _you_ a good decoy? If you get yourself killed, I don't want your sister to strangle us with her placenta cord."

Natsumi sniffed in disdain. " _I_ can heal myself in real time, on the battlefield. It's not a talent I'd like the whole world to know, gotta keep some secrets in the back pocket and all, but hey, we're supposed to be allies here, and it just doesn't make sense to keep secrets at the cost of getting us all killed and cursing our children to the unknown fate of whatever lies across the ocean. Which is child prostitution and cannibalism, if the odors on the raiders are anything to go by." She wrinkled her nose. "And something demonic, but not like the tailed beasts. I haven't been able to put my finger on what the cause of _that_ odor is about."

"How close is the nearest group?" Hashirama asked.

Natsumi turned her head to look in various directions. "The Akimichi group is about fifty-five kilometers away, north-west. The Sarutobi and Inuzuka groups are already at the beaches, one hundred kilometers south of us. The Senju group is only twenty kilometers behind them. The Uchiha group is the closest – forty-five kilometers south-east."

Madara glanced over at Izuna – his brother had gone deathly still, his face expressionless. His eyes flickered erratically between red and black.

"It looks like I'm going to being delayed, for reasons," Shinzou said, making a pained face as she rubbed her stomach – it had gone rigid again. "Three of our sisters can help me, the other three I'll attach to the group of men to act as trackers. As a force, they won't be able to move as fast as Natsumi. One of you," she glared down her nose at Madara and Hashirama, "get to be leader of the rescue, in my temporary absence."

Wait a minute… Madara was pretty sure that he never agreed to Shinzou being the leader of the rescue. He had just assumed that they were working side-by-side, equal in authority, but hands-off in regards to the other's clan.

Shinzou turned back to Natsumi. "By the time the main group reaches you, you should've taken out the other berserker and learned of how to defeat the raiders as a whole, or you'll be dead, and the two with you can explain to the main group how you managed to get yourself killed, so they don't have to share in your fate."

Natsumi grinned. "I don't intend to die until I'm a hundred years old."

"The gods aren't big on intentions."

Natsumi made a fist and shook it. "If the Shinigami comes for me today, I'll just sock him in the nose and tell him to return in eighty years."

"I'm going with you," Izuna said in a low growl.

Madara instantly clamped a hand around Izuna's wrist. "No. You would never be able to stand back _and do nothing but watch_."

Izuna kept his wrist and arm loose; he didn't bother pulling away from Madara, but tension tightened his shoulders and legs. "I don't care who deals the killing blow, as long as the raider is _dead_." He pinned Natsumi with a solid Sharingan-gaze. "I'll let you rip out the raider's throat, dismantle his body, piss on his insides, and throw the pieces into a pit. Let me set the remains on fire, and I'll be satisfied with that."

"Swear it to me," Madara whispered urgently.

Izuna's hand tightened into a fist before it relaxed again. "I will not involve myself in the fight."

"Good," Natsumi declared. "It's _my_ fight. I'd be quite irritated with you for interrupting my fight."

Madara suppressed the urge to kick Natsumi, seeing as how she had interrupted the fight between Madara and Hashirama just yesterday by assaulting them from mid-air.

"I'm going." Tobirama stood. "If you're going, so am I. I'll be the sensor."

The look Izuna gave Tobirama was toxic with loathing as he rose to his feet. "Why – do you plan on stabbing me if I lose control?"

"I don't need to stab you. I just have to prop my sword up on a rock where you'll _trip_ onto it."

Natsumi stepped between them. "Boys, please. You'll have your chance to spill some blood in a little while. In the mean time," the smile that flashed all her teeth was as cold as steel, "I'll need you to strip down."


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note:** When I first started writing this, I never intended it to be told strictly from the POV of Madara and Izuna. However, I was never able to quite figure out Hashirama's internal voice, so instead you get to see the world through the eyes of the Uchiha brothers. Also, somehow, Tobirama and Izuna got the same rivalry between each other that Madara and Hashirama have, except it's much more toxic.

* * *

Natsumi had meant their armor, when she told them to strip, so they could drop excess weight and make even faster time than they had previously, but Tobirama had to remove everything so he could dress in some dry, black, tightly-fitted silks that still offered some level of protection.

"Woo-hoo, you are built like a _stud_ ," she declared in wide-eyed delight, reaching out to stroke Tobirama's bare chest.

Tobirama swatted her hands away as his face flushed red. "Keep your paws to yourself! I don't go around groping you, do I?"

Natsumi cupped her breasts and leaned forward. "All you have to do is ask," she said in a husky voice. "You smell nice enough to eat, even when you're all sweaty and stinky from running all morning and wearing ridiculous amounts of heavy armor. Rowwr." She trailed her hands along his hips as he tripped over his own boots, trying to retreat out of her reach. "Want some victory sex after I defeat the raider? Battles always get me hot and bothered."

Tobirama managed to put Izuna between him and Natsumi, and sent his brother a panicked look. Hashirama help his hands up and shuffled backwards. "You volunteered for this," he said. "I'm afraid that this is going to be one of those missions where you just have to grit your teeth and bear it. Job hazard and all that."

"My water broke," Shinzou said. She kicked Hashirama as a puddle formed beneath herself. "Change of plans. You're my new midwife. Let's see how your Mystic Palm works on childbirth."

"Good luck with that," Natsumi told Hashirama as Izuna and Tobirama haphazardly threw a bunch of supplies in a pack, and Izuna slipped behind a solid wall of his armored clansmen, out of sight, where he could dress in his only pair of fresh trousers and shirt – dark grey with the Uchiha fan prominently displayed across his back, shoulder to shoulder. "This one likes to hold hands when she's in labor. It's like a rite of passage. See you later," she told her sister and the six other Inuzuka woman like she was wandering off to have a picnic. "I'm off to kill me a raider." She patted her thigh. "With me, Umeboshi." The ninken pushed himself against Natsumi, nearly knocking her off her feet.

"Lop me off a hand. We can turn the bones into a baby rattle," Shinzou said.

"Sure."

Izuna wasn't sure if the Inuzuka sisters were playing their behaviors up for the presence of the Uchiha or the Senju men, but he wasn't going to question it. Everyone dealt with grief in their own way, he knew, and the Inuzuka women had lost fourteen of their oldest and youngest fighters, six children, and over three dozen ninken – well over half their canines. With their armor carefully tucked into makeshift packs and left behind with trusted clansmen, Izuna and Tobirama followed Natsumi and her ninken, easily matching her pace with a lot less sweat.

"What's your approach on the raiders going to look like?" Tobirama asked, raising his voice to be heard as they took to the trees overhead, staying away from the thick underbrush.

"I'm going to smash into them so hard, they won't even know what hit them," Natsumi replied, blithely. "Why, do you have a better suggestion?"

Considering her show of brute force in their clash against the Uchiha, Izuna wasn't sure that Natsumi would be successful following a suggestion doing anything else. Unless the suggestion, given her behaviors, included the possibility of smothering her opponents with her pendulous breasts. But smothering wasn't the sort of death Izuna wanted the murderer of his wife and clansmen to suffer. Smothering was too quick and too painless.

"I'm good with the smashing," Izuna said.

"Sure," Tobirama replied with a downward drag on the corners of his mouth. "When you're a hammer, everything is just a nail. Smash away."

oOoOoOo

In three hours, they had traveled thirty kilometers, and the raider party had traveled an addition ten, when there was a shift. "I think they're on to us," Natsumi said, skidding to a sudden halt. They were on the other side of the mountain range, where old-growth forests were reluctantly giving way to flatter plains, waist-high in prairie grass and sage brush. The forests and steep terrain had hindered their travel speeds, and the delay itched under Izuna's skin, like a swarm of crawling, biting fire ants.

Tobirama knelt and slid two fingers into the ground. Izuna felt a wave of chakra, razor-sharp and paper-thin, shoot through the ground. "One is coming at us. The others are have picked up pace. They're forcing the children to move faster."

"They _must_ have a sensor of some sort," Natsumi said, stroking the head of her ninken. Umeboshi lifted his head and growled. "It's the berserker who slaughtered everyone, moving towards us. At the rate he's traveling," she was silent for a moment, lifting her nose in the air, "and if we maintained our previous pace, we'll meet head-long in an hour. Well, time to prepare for battle."

With that, she sat down cross-legged on the grass and rummaged through the pack on Umeboshi's back. She withdrew a storage scroll with the Uzumaki signature hallmarks, humming an old lullaby under her breath.

After a heartbeat, Izuna reminded himself that he had promised his brother that he wouldn't fight the raider, and it was very, very difficult to keep that promise if he _stabbed Natsumi in the neck_. He opted to rub a spot between his eyes, which had been feeling tight and sensitive from the stress of the last twenty-four hours. "What are you doing?" he asked, when it looked like Tobirama was just as stunned as Izuna. (He loathed the idea of having anything in common with the Senju ratfink.)

"Making ramen." Natsumi released the contents of the storage scroll. It was a pile of tin bowls, sealed shut with wax paper. "It's a beautiful day for a picnic."

"Are you serious?" He looked at Tobirama. What was so wrong with the world that the ratfink was the other only sensible person in a ten kilometer radius? "Tell me she isn't serious."

Natsumi peeled the wax paper off, and dumped water into a tin filled with dried noodles and seasoning.

"She seems serious to me," Tobirama replied, crossing his arms in front of himself.

Natsumi held the tin up to Izuna. "Can you control your fire release well enough to make the water boil in here? It's the latest thing from the Uzumaki clan. Instant ramen. They're geniuses. The downside is that it takes three minutes for the hot water to cook everything. They haven't yet figured out how to put fresh, hot ramen in stasis so it's ready to eat the instant you pull it out of a transport scroll, but I'm sure someone will figure it out."

Izuna mechanically accepted the tin, and fought down the urge to chuck it at Natsumi's head as she sifted through the stack.

"What flavors do you guys want?" Natsumi asked, squinted at the characters stamped into the wax paper. "I've got pork, shrimp, curry, and beef. The curry always seems a little off, and the pork tastes more like chicken, but pork _is_ the other white meat, so maybe there's some kind of cosmic joke in all of this." Then she glared up at Izuna when he hadn't yet heated up the water. "What? I may be reckless, aggressive, loud, and sometimes have a poor sense of self-awareness, but I'm not stupid. I haven't eaten anything in over eight hours. I'm going to need all the energy I can get, going into this unknown battle, and since _he's_ coming to me, that'll buy me some time for a quick bite."

Tobirama selected the curry-flavored ramen tin. "She's got a point." His eyes, every bit as red as the Sharingan and no less cruel, flickered towards Izuna before they settled back on Natsumi. "You know, I can much more easily heat the water before putting it on the ramen than _he_ can. Water release is a strength of mine."

Oh, the challenge was _on_.

oOoOoOo

The berserker didn't pause in his travel during Natsumi's impromptu ramen break. By the time she had finished four tins (complaining, with every bite, about how the curry ramen was totally _not_ curry flavored, although Izuna had thought it was perfectly acceptable), the berserker had closed the original distance between them of twenty-five kilometers to fifteen.

"I have half a mind to let him come all the way to me, wear himself out a little with the speed he's maintaining," Natsumi said, carefully repacking away the empty tins, since she apparently got a discount on additional ramen when she traded in the used tins.

Tobirama snorted. "From this distance? The man's chakra stores are nearly as large as yours. You may as well drop the levels of an ocean with a tea cup."

Izuna would, where the ratfink couldn't hear, admit that he had absolutely no talent as a sensor, but even he could tell that Natsumi was a chakra juggernaut. Her stores were at least twice that of Shinzou's, and easily three times that of either him or Tobirama.

"You're right." Natsumi carefully threaded her fingers through her hair. She pulled plain wooden beads free, and then replaced them with ivory beads that had tiny, very distinct Uzumaki seals. Against her copper bright hair, they were a visible target.

"Mito's work?" Tobirama asked, squinting and leaning closer. He carefully slid one hand under a portion of her hair and lifted it for a look without making skin contact with the bead.

Natsumi purred. "Ooooh, you can run your fingers through my hair _any_ time."

Tobirama immediately dropped her hair and retreated, face and ears flushing as bright as Natsumi's hair.

Natsumi's amusement was visible, even without the Sharingan. "Mito's work. She not only etched explosive seals into beads, but she created the food stasis seal for the ramen. That girl is going places in life, I bet." Having tucked away all her supplies, Natsumi threaded her fingers through her ninken's fur, and then leaned forward, touching her forehead and nose against the canine's snout. She was silent for a moment, and then Umeboshi huffed into her face. "I know," she whispered. "But this is a one-on-one battle, and I have to drag it out so we can figure out what they've done to our sisters, to our pups. _You_ need to watch, so you can tell the other ninken how to fight. Do this for me."

After a brief moment, Umeboshi wagged his tail and swiped his tongue from chin to nose. "Blah! Doggy kisses!" She threw her arms around him and hugged tightly. "Thank you, my friend." Then she rose to her feet to face the direction of the berserker. It was mid-afternoon, and her skin, bronzed from her nudist lifestyle, shone with the vigor of life. A small breeze rustled her copper bright hair.

She was red and gold, the color of fire, Izuna realized breathlessly. _Like a live spark that explodes a forest into a raging fire._ Her muscles were sharply defined, and she was as tall as a man, every bit as bold and as fearless as any male warrior he had ever seen. For a moment, as he stared at her back, there was something incredibly timeless about her.

 _I want that for Hakuchou_ , he thought in a rush. His two year old girl, face still chubby with baby fat. He had always wanted his son to be become a fine warrior, but until he had seen how Honami had been cut down, until he had realized that Honami had tried to defend their children and clanspeople with a fucking _wok_ , he had never given any thought of his daughter learning how to be a capable warrior. Someone else was supposed to protect her – a father, a brother, a husband.

And if there were no fathers, brothers, or husbands around?

Why should his daughter _have_ to rely on a man? Why should _any_ Uchiha woman have to rely on a man? They had the same blood, the same determination, the same ferocious love and protection running through their bodies and souls as any Uchiha male. Their clanswomen should also be able to stand in the autumn sun, bold and cocky and so utterly _powerful_ that they eagerly cracked their knuckles in anticipation of battle, instead of collapsing in fear and desperately hoping that someone would come to their rescue.

And when Natsumi turned and smiled at him, teeth flashing with the sly cunning of a predator that knows it can afford to play around with its prey, Izuna silently amended that his daughter (and other Uchiha women) were _not_ allowed to go into battle topless. He felt himself returning her smile, every bit as cruel and cocky. "Are you going to let him come for you," he began, eyes blooming into the Mangyko Sharingan, "or are you going to meet him halfway, on a battleground of your own choosing."

"I like that last idea," Natsumi said. Tobirama's eyes flickered between them, uncertainty crossing his face. "Do you want me to dismantle the berserker before or after I rip out his throat?"

"I want him to suffer."

"Before, it is."

"Could you eviscerate him, too?" Rage flooded his veins as he thought of his wife and their children. Bitterness – towards himself, towards Madara, towards the ratfink and his Senju kin, he _would've_ been there to protect his beloved if he hadn't gone to any fucking peace treaties talk – tasted like the ash of burnt bodies in his mouth.

"I'll see what I can do," Natsumi turned south again, "but I can't promise anything on evisceration. Intestines _stink_ when you tear them open."

oOoOoOo

They traveled only another three kilometers before Natsumi declared their surroundings to be suitable for her chosen battle ground. It was close to a creek – low, given how late in the season it was – that was surrounded on either side by thick groves of cottonwoods. With their large limbs and thick, burnished-yellow leaves, the cottonwoods provided a good cover for Tobirama and Izuna. They perched themselves high enough off the ground that Izuna had a good aerial view of the site. Not as adept at climbing trees as the humans, Umeboshi crouched on the ground, hidden in the undergrowth of shrubs.

As for Natsumi, she stood beyond the line of cottonwoods, wading through the tall prairie grasses until she was at least a hundred meters away from the trees. She had a handful more of the ivory beads, and she spent the next fifteen minutes pricking her thumb bloody with a claw, coating the ivory beads in blood, and tossing them around the perimeter. As far as Izuna could tell, her aim was random.

When the berserker was a kilometer away, the wash of killing intent – scorching hot and stinking of sulfur – hit them. Izuna heard Umeboshi's growl, low and deep like the rumble of an avalanche, and Natsumi briefly glanced over her shoulder, her gaze hard and her mouth set in a grim line. Even without any sensor ability, Izuna could feel the massive chakra.

"Oh shit," Tobirama muttered. He bit his thumbnail. "The berserker has even _more_ chakra. Shit shit shit."

Izuna activated the Sharingan. "As far as we can tell, healing chakra takes a fine control. He's bleeding chakra everywhere to maintain his pace. Natsumi could still outlast him."

"This is going to be brutal."

It was extremely rare for Izuna to stand on the sidelines when there was fighting to be done against enemies. He was usually in the heart of the battle. He knew the same could be said for Tobirama. The opportunity to witness and comment on a battle with someone who was almost as knowledgeable and as skilled was, well, kinda exciting. Even if it was with the ratfink.

They had expected the berserker to charge into the field and immediately attack Natsumi. His pace had never stopped the moment he zeroed in on their party – but he skidded to a halt, ten meters away from Natsumi.

Tobirama bit his thumb bloody to stay silent. Izuna was strongly reconsidering his choice in being the Uchiha to accompany the Inuzuka woman.

The berserker was naked. Not half-naked, like Natsumi, but completely naked except for a pair of leather boots. He was also very hairy. His white-blond hair cascaded in wild tangles down his back, and his eyes were as blue as the far-distant sky. His beard, a few shades darker, disappeared into his chest hair. He was a massive man, easily three heads taller than Izuna, and nearly twice as wide with solid, heavy muscle. The double-headed battle axe clenched in his right hand gleamed, meticulously clean and well-oiled. His arms and shoulders had painted red streaks running down them, as if someone had run bloody hands up and down his skin.

" _Valkyrja_ ," the berserker whispered, eyes bulging. "You are a beautiful sight in this land of barbarians. _Jashin_ has blessed me this day." He spoke with an odd accent, consonants bubbling and vowels oily.

"Thanks," said Natsumi. "Nice ax."

"We shall suffer greatly together, beautifully. Your death shall be most magnificent, and my god will welcome you in open arms."

"I'd rather have the ax."

"I have traveled many places, in my life. In all my travels, no woman has ever stood before me with such boldness, such strength. I am honored and blessed. If _Jashin_ would only permit it, I would have you live longer, suffer this life more, so the world may continue to be blessed with your presence."

"Well, shoot." Izuna could just imagine the smile stretching across Natsumi's face – the smile that said, _I plan on having a great deal of fun ripping your esophagus out._ "You sure know how to get a girl all hot and bothered." (He briefly wondered, as his hands curled into fists, what the monster had said to Honami when she lunged at him with a wok swinging in her hand.)

The berserker tilted his head up towards the sun, throwing his arms wide. "Oh, beloved and blessed _J_ _ashin_ , accept the sacrifice of this lowly, pitiful servant. God of suffering, although she is a barbarian and a heathen, I beg you to welcome this beautiful _valkyrja_ into the highest ranks of your _Valhöll._ _"_

 _"It's the body paint and the bloodlust, isn't it?" Natsumi waved at herself, still waiting for the berserker to make his first move. The painted whales were much more elegant than berserker's bloody streaks. "Don't feel bad. It just has that effect on men."_

 _The berserker's eyes fluttered shut. "Ah,_ _sváss_ _. When_ _Jashin_ _finally calls me home, when I have suffered enough for him, perhaps we shall drink mead together."_

 _"You know, I'm just not in to sharing drinks with an asshole who slaughters a bunch of women and then runs off with their kids."_

 _The berserker's eyes opened. His face was placidly calm. It was totally the opposite of being berserk. "Ah, it is a gift I have given to these heathens and barbarians. To suffer is to see the face_ _Jashin_ _. To be a great warrior, one must suffer. And Jashin requires great warriors gathered in the_ _Valhöll,_ _in preparation for the_ _Ragnarök_ _. When_ _Jashin_ _has deemed the gift I offer to be worthy, I give him their souls. There have been many in this land whom_ _Jashin_ _has declared worthy."_

 _Natsumi tilted her head to the side. "And if they're not worthy?"_

 _"_ _Hel_ _welcomes them to_ _Helheim_." Then, looking very concerned with the potential prospect of Natsumi winding up in a place where they couldn't share mead together in the afterlife, the not-quite-berserker said, " _Helheim_ is much colder. It doesn't have a raging bonfire."

Natsumi tossed her hair over her shoulder. "Do I look like the cold bothers me? Look, I'm waiting for the actual fight. I had to leave my sister, giving _birth_ , in the questionable company of two male buffoons. I didn't chase you half-way across this country just for you to bore me to death with empty talk."

"Ah, to be so eager, _sváss._ Very well, let us both gaze upon the face of _Jashin_." The flare of chakra, suffocating heavy, was the only indication of the raider shifting from placidly calm to berserker. He slammed into Natsumi, punching the flat head of the axe into her abdomen. Natsumi doubled over the axe, using her momentum to roll in midair up the length of the berserker's right arm until she pinned her thighs around the berserker's head and scissored him sideways into the ground. He tucked and rolled upright, axe whistling in the air as it made a wide, silver arc.

Natsumi caught the blade, chakra flaring, and tried to wrench it out of the berserker's grasp. He grabbed the hilt with both arms and kicked at her. She flipped overhead, releasing her grip, and _shinshinned_ in mid-air to the berserker's backside. Her fists were blurs as she pummeled him in the kidneys, and then slid away.

Left hand not gripping the axe, he snatched a handful of hair. The white ivory beads slid free. His eyes widened as they glowed bright between the cracks of his fist, and then they exploded.

"Dibs on the axe!" Natsumi chased after the axe as it blasted through the air, the berserker momentarily going limp in the deep, blackened crater the beads had created.

Tobirama pinched the bridge of his nose. Izuna wished he could do the same, but he had to keep his eyes on the fight the entire time to memorize and analyze every move. "Why did we agree to let Natsumi fight, again?" Tobirama muttered.

Natsumi stood away from the crater, axe slung over her shoulder. As tall and as solidly built as she was, she almost looked too small to wield it. Her eyes were narrow as she stared ahead, body still and lank. Then she flashed towards the pit, axe raised overhead with both hands. When the berserker threw himself over the edge, she slammed the axe into his skull, a hollow _thunk_ ringing through the plains as she lodged the blade deep. He immediately clamped both hands around the handle, and pulled.

Natsumi kicked him in the face. "Hey, let go! I already claimed this as mine!"

A blast of raw chakra threw her backwards without the axe.

The berserker yanked the blade free and ignored the chunk of skull that sheared free. He threw his shoulders back and cackled. Natsumi somersaulted in the air and landed on all fours, skidding through the tall grass. She immediately rose upright into a battle stance. "That's fine, I'll just get it again later."

The berserker ignored the blood streaming down his face. "Ah, _sváss_ , you truly have no fear."

"You're ugly, not scary."

"You are naïve." His voice was layered with another's, shadows of darkness and decay trembling in the tones. "And you haven't yet _suffered_ enough." He threw himself at her, axe swinging.

Natsumi met him halfway, chakra flaring at each limb. The two battered each other across the battlefield, one moving with a predatory grace as easily through the air as she did across the ground, the other with an unbreakable force, the ground trembling with each stomp of his feet. Natsumi dodged the blade of the axe and pummeled the berserker's body as he swung with all limbs, open-handed and sharp-bladed. She was faster, and potentially stronger, but he shrugged off her blows as easily as he had shrugged off an axe that had cleaved his skull apart.

"They're taijutsu monsters," Tobirama whispered, open-mouthed.

Izuna kept himself carefully still. When Senju, Uzumaki, Hyuuga, and Uchiha met each other in battle, it was as much a battle of ninjutsu and strategy as it was displays of raw strength, weaponry skills, and fuuinjutsu. The Inuzuka, however, fought like animals – their weapons were their own bodies, and their style was strictly physical. That's what people said. Until yesterday, Izuna had never seen an Inuzuka actually fight – the Uchiha, as a general rule, felt that women were the weaker sex, and there just didn't seem any honor in grappling with a half-naked woman, no matter how insulting and crude she may be.

And what people said was every bit right. But like a pair of wolves battling for territory, like a badger taking on a bear, like a cougar stalking an oblivious mountain goat, there was no denying the brutal strength and inhuman speed. Animals were fierce and deadly, as beautiful and as breathtaking as a hunting hawk diving to strike, and so was the Inuzuka woman. A single blow from Natsumi – and she wasn't holding back – could cave in Izuna's ribcage, even with his strongest set of fuuinjutsu-reinforced armor. Her speed, even without the shunshin, was phenomenal. Her ability to change trajectory in mid-air with a twist of her body in less than a blink of an eye was eerie.

Most frighteningly of all, no matter what Natsumi did – exploding ivory beads, precise pressure point strikes, kicking the cleaved skull to send bone fragments and white brain matter flying, punches that created ravines as large as the exploding beads when her fists glanced off and struck the ground – the berserker shrugged off. Chakra juggernaut Natsumi was losing her stamina, throwing everything she had into devastating attacks that would've leveled a mountain.

It was, Izuna thought with a racing chill, like fighting the ocean, instead. An explosion in the water meant nothing – more water simply rushed in, and the ocean is unmoved by aggressive attacks. So the unnatural life force ( _demonic,_ Natsumi had described his odor, once), perhaps even a strange immortality granted by his strange god, would explain why his clansmen had not been able to defeat this single opponent. If blows that should've shattered bone and liquefied muscle didn't make one iota of difference, then what could ninjutsu do? Perhaps a razor-pointed attack, something that was sharp and piercing, might do more damage.

As Natsumi raked her claws across the berserker's torso, leaving ribbons of flayed flesh, _still to no avail_ , Izuna was forced to reconsider.

But it didn't yet explain how his kin had died with identical wounds.

It took just a blink of an eye – the edge of the battle axe slanted just differently while Natsumi was arching overhead to avoid it – for the berserker to finally spill Natsumi's blood. The blade had grazed her cheek, splitting the skin open.

She landed away from him, eyes narrow in suspicion, as the berserker went still. Then he chuckled. He slowly unfolded himself from his stance, and brought the axe eye-level, just as his manhood also swelled and rose. The small streak of crimson on the blade's edge was dark against the gleaming steel.

"And now," he whispered, attempting to stare at her with his eyes (one drooped much lower in one side, _that_ part of his skull still only attached because of the clinging strip of skin and muscle), "now, we shall see the face of my god." The moment he touched his tongue to the bloody edge, moaning with pleasure, Natsumi swiped her thumb across her cheek, and her hands flew through seals for the first time that Izuna had known her – _boar dog bird monkey ram_ – and she released the largest blast of chakra yet.

If Izuna released _that_ much chakra at once, he would be in a coma for a week, if not outright _dead_.

Natsumi summoned a whale, and dropped it on the berserker.

* * *

 **Author's addendum:** so, yeah, I made the first Jashinists _vikings_. Also, viking versus ninja. I should win the Internet for this, tonight. :D


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's note:** I should consider warning everyone that there is an actual scene of childbirth. I did my best to avoid any great details. Trust me, I can get quite detailed with things. I opted to spare my readers of such. All of, oh, six or seven of you who made it this far. Also, Madara is a product of his time. (He's misogynistic.)

* * *

"You are a disgrace," Madara said. "You should be ashamed for your weakness. Crying, as if it hurts. How painful can this process be, for you?"

A whimper was his only answer, shortly followed by a howl. Shinzou held her breath through the contraction and pushed, but still had the strength to level a glare at Madara. Being on all fours with her cousin Boshi preparing to catch prevented Madara and Hashirama from a bird's eye view of the actual miracle of life. It also made it easier for Shinzou to glare at them.

"Labor," Madara continued, enjoying the chance to allow his sadistic cruelty reign free, "is no excuse to break down and snivel. I honestly expected you to be stronger."

Hashirama shook his free fist at Madara. "She is _breaking_ my hand! _You_ hold her hand, and see how well you don't cry when she snaps all twenty-seven bones!"

Shinzou took a breath as the contraction eased up. "What the hell was I thinking when I invited you two?" Then she sucker-punched Madara in the knee. It ached and throbbed immediately. "You still haven't heated up the water, yet. We're going to need that for clean-up."

Hashirama attempted to free his hand from Shinzou's iron grip. Her claws had sunk deep, and blood ribboned from his hand down to her elbow. "The Mystic Palm, by its very name, requires use of my hands. It's hard to heal with just one hand!"

"That's lousy." She reluctantly released him, and he scooted out of her reach, cradling the broken, bruised, swollen limb to his chest. His other hand glowed green and he pressed it against the mess that Shinzou had made. Before Madara could move towards the leather bucket, Shinzou snatched his hand. "Squeezing something helps focus my mind," she told him, as he studied her grip and wondered if he should cut her hand off above, or below, the point of her wrist.

"Why do we need them again?" Bashira asked, crouching next to Shinzou's head. Bashira was the youngest of the Inuzuka women present, and Madara would eat his armor if she wasn't any older than fourteen years old. She was as half-naked as her kinswomen, but her chest was flat and easy to ignore in favor of the graceful, sweeping horses painted in the same plum-purple that colored the triangles on her face.

"Because the Senju has the Mystic Palm, it's a _bitch_ to run with vaginal and perineal tears, and I don't trust the Uchiha's control to contain the fight to themselves and not get our daughters caught up in the middle."

Madara grunted as Shinzou tightened her grip and pushed with her next contraction. He was beginning to regret mocking Hashirama's discomfort.

"Almost here," Boshi said. "The head is starting to crown."

Madara felt his stomach swim at Boshi's announcement. Across the ravine, where they had crossed earlier to provide some semblance of privacy, the remaining Senju and Uchiha men were lounging in the bushes with fingers stuffed in their ears. The four other Inuzuka women were nestled in a pile of their ninken, and they all appeared to be taking an afternoon nap. It was exceedingly rare for men to be present when their wives gave birth – it was unheard of to be present with a woman they weren't married to.

Shinzou, apparently, didn't seem anymore bothered by the presence of Madara and Hashirama than she was bothered by displaying her leaking breasts or squirming stomach to the world.

There was no shame in retreating from this area, but there was probably shame in cutting off a woman's hand while she was in labor.

Madara was strongly considering the pros ( _many)_ and cons ( _at the moment, very few_ ) of throwing honor to the wind and bringing shame down on his head to escape this horrific situation when Shinzou finally pushed life into the world.

The squalling infant made more noise than Shinzou did. Boshi passed the infant to Bashira, and Madara stared as Boshi quickly tied a leather thong around the grotesque white cord that stretched from behind Shinzou to the infant's stomach, pinching it tight. She tied another leather thong just few finger lengths above the first. Boshi then held her hand out to Madara expectedly. "Kunai!" she barked.

Madara blinked at her. There was a spread of pooling blood between Shinzou's knees, and he was pretty sure that a sharp blade wasn't going to improve the situation. Was it normal for woman to bleed like that? No wonder so many died in childbirth.

"Kunai! You've got the blade, and I've got to cut the cord." Madara reluctantly handed it over. It was sharp enough that Boshi sliced through the cord without any effort. He suddenly felt slightly better, like he had contributed an important part in this entire process.

"What do I get to do?" Hashirama asked eagerly, stroking the infant's goop-covered head with a single finger.

"You can't do anything until after I pass the afterbirth," Shinzou replied.

Madara studied the infant as Bashira carefully cleaned white gunk and blood away from the infant's face. It shrieked like a cat, and almost as loud. He focused on the size of the infant's head and shoulders. He thought of how tight it felt in sex, sheathed deep in a woman's body. He mentally compared the size of those shoulders to the size of his erection. There was a discernible difference.

With a full body-shudder, Shinzou squeezed Madara's hand again and rocked her hips as Boshi carefully tugged on the end of the cord still attached to Shinzou. A reddish white blob, almost as large as the baby, plopped to the ground with another gush of blood.

Madara gritted his teeth and refused to let his own pain show. He had always considered women to be the weaker sex. He still did, even after this. So if Shinzou wasn't going to scream when the infant and whatever the hell _that_ was came out of her body, through what was normally _not_ a very large orifice, then he wasn't going to make a fuss over his hand.

As Hashirama, guided by Boshi, moved around and raised his glowing hands to soothe away damage that Madara gratefully couldn't see from his angle, Bashira carefully displayed the infant in front of Shinzou. Her smile was bright. "You have a daughter," Bashira announced.

Shinzou didn't smile, but her face glowed with pride and satisfaction. "She shall be called Koppun."

Madara's gaze flickered to the blood that continued to pool beneath Shinzou. It now reached the point of her elbows.

"Um, is this level of bleeding normal?" Hashirama asked. "I've never, uh, had to be a midwife before, and the uterus is not an organ I'm familiar with."

"The bleeding? Yes. Those tears?" Boshi pointed. Hashirama tried not to look, but did so anyway after she elbowed him in the side hard enough to audibly crack a rib. "Those are not normal. And make sure you see what you're doing – don't heal the vagina shut, you idiot."

"What," asked Madara, "would you have done if this had been a son?"

The warm look in Shinzou's face froze. Her eyes glittered, like sun off of the hilt of a kunai. "I suppose the usual action wouldn't do, what with all of us working together to rescue children." There was no joy or amusement in the smile she gave him. "But that doesn't matter, here and now. I have a daughter, and she is mine." Then she turned her head south, brow furrowing with concern. "Ah, my sister has called upon her guardian. Bashira, get some water and help me wash up – we're going to have to move fast, now."

oOoOoOo

(In another world or another timeline...)

As Hashirama, guided by Boshi, moved around and raised his glowing hands to soothe away damage that Madara gratefully couldn't see from his angle, Bashira carefully angled her body away from Shinzou, hiding the infant with sight. "It's a boy." She spat the word like it burned in her mouth.

Madara had thought the grip Shinzou had was painful before. He was so wrong. So very, _very,_ wrong. The grip tightening in rage was _worse_. Then, with a deep breath, Shinzou released Madara. She pushed herself upright, ignoring Hashirama's squawk as she sat on his hands. Madara really, _really_ didn't need to look at Shinzou's body from this angle. Her stomach was still swollen, and yet oddly deflated. Her nostrils flared as she gripped Bashira's bony shoulder and pushed her around to verify the infant's sex.

Her claws left bloody pricks in the infant's leg. "Leave it," she growled. "Should've known… worthless lump of flesh." Her eyes gleamed with moisture. "Of course it would also run a week late and inconvenience _everything_."

"Hell no!" Hashirama slid free from Shinzou's backside. "You _do not_ get to lecture Madara and me on the safety and wellbeing of children, you _do not_ get to drag us cross-country as part of your rescue party, and you _do not_ get to leave a newborn to die from abandonment!"

"Then you take it!"

"I will!"

Bashira immediately shoved the infant into Hashirama's arms before he could change his mind.

Shinzou's expression immediately settled into something remarkably smug. "Hah. Natsumi bet that I would just pawn this one on to Shikataro. She now owes me two hundred ryo since I found an entirely different clan to accept it."

Madara eyed her as he tucked his aching, protesting hand under an armpit and tried to pretend that it wasn't on fire in utter agony. "So that's why Shikataro offered to send some clansmen. Not because he felt we needed more help, but because he knew that you would try abandoning your own flesh and blood if it was a boy."

Shinzou eyed him back. "Inuzuka don't claim boys. We _won't_ claim them. Boys grow up to be men," her expression darkened, "and the only thing I've found a man to be good for is for breeding, and not even pleasurably, at that. My sisters and I can do anything that _you_ can do, and more." Shinzou's expression shifted once again. She looked smug _and_ sly. "Besides," she added, "it was a Senju I seduced to sire my child. It seems appropriate to give it back to its sire."

Hashirama turned white. "Wait – _what_?"

"Not _you_ , personally."

Hashirama heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh good, because I know who I've slept with, and you're not it. So, um, now what?" He looked plaintively at the infant. His legs and arms jerked in the air with his wails. "How am I supposed to feed the baby? What do they eat?" He looked at Madara.

"Why are you looking at me?" Madara asked.

" _You've_ got nieces and nephews."

Madara pointed at Shinzou with the hand that wasn't broken. " _She's_ the one with the experience." The closest he had ever come to childcare was holding the children when Izuna had offered, although two weeks ago he had attempted to show little Obito how to correctly hold a kunai. (Madara decided he would leave early instruction to Izuna's care, after the rotten little chibi stabbed him in the hand with said kunai.)

Shinzou sighed, as if she was martyring herself. "Oh, very well. I can't expect you to find a wet nurse right now. I shall agree to breastfeed your son until after we've rescued our children, and have agreed to part ways."

Hashirama's eyes narrowed. "That's quite generous of you." He wasn't given to sarcasm often, so Madara didn't know if Hashirama was just being polite, or really was sarcastic.

oOoOoOo

Whales are very large animals. Izuna had seen the stripped-down carcasses on the beaches. The Sarutobi clan moonlighted as whale hunters during the winter; the Uchiha would travel to the beaches to trade for blubber so the clanswomen could make candles. And while summon contracts were rare, Izuna was familiar enough with them to know that the more powerful the summoned creature was, the larger its size. Izuna just couldn't tell if Natsumi had summoned a very powerful whale, as they tended to be the size of a mountain _anyway._

Izuna had never seen a live whale out of water. He was pretty sure, given the expression in its eye as it rolled around before finally settled on Natsumi, that the whale had also never been out of water before.

"Really?" the whale asked Natsumi, its voice so deep and so low that Izuna's eardrums throbbed with pain.

"Desperate times call for desperate measure," Natsumi replied, one hand on her hip as she surveyed the damage.

The whale's fins flapped in the air and the tail thrashed as it floundered on dry land. The tail wiped out a third of the cottonwood trees, sending the ancient trees flying through the air like they were match sticks. "Do I _look_ like I'm the best thing to call up in a fight on land?" The deep rumbling of its indignant voice made the creek flow backwards. "You couldn't have tried the geese, the lions, the boars, or even the damn squirrels?"

"I needed something large enough to give me room to breathe." Natsumi's hands flared green, and she ran them up and down her legs and torso. Her right knee cap, swollen and livid purple, quickly returned to a normal state. The bloom of bruises across her liver disappeared. Lastly, she closed the laceration across her cheek. "Things are about to get _much_ more serious." She glanced towards the tree where Izuna and Tobirama were perched. "I don't know what the hell just happened, but the moment, he touched his tongue to my blood, _something_ sunk its claws into my soul."

The whale's eye, which seemed strangely small for its gigantic size, rolled in exasperation. "I'd ask you if you're sure you know what you're doing, but you never know what you're doing."

Tobirama snorted, even though Izuna was the only one who could hear him at this distance. "Hell of an understatement."

Natsumi tossed her head back and laughed. "I like to wing it, but I'm so sure of myself, it all works out in the end."

The whale almost said something more, but instead its expression froze. Natsumi slapped her hands together at the same time as it roared – a deep roar that blew one of Izuna's eardrums, blood instantly streaming out of his left ear, and shook the trees. Natsumi dispelled the whale, but not in time to prevent a spray of blood as the berserker carved a black path through the whale with his axe. Beneath the rain of blood, his skull was intact, fused together as if it had never been injured. His blond hair and beard was now a deep black, and his skin was a deep shade of silver without a single bruise to be seen. His erection still jutted upward. Without the whale's body covering him up, even in the pool of blood, they could see that he stood in the center of a ritualistic-looking black triangle that was surrounded by a black circle.

"Before he welcomes you, _sváss,_ Jashin says you must embrace your suffering."

Natsumi made a show of looking up and down the length of the berserker's body. "I like to think of myself as a modern woman who enjoys a good roll in the hay with a handsome stud, but I'm going to have to pass this time around."

The berserker cackled, half-mad and half-amused, and silently slammed the butt of his axe into his left thigh. As the sound of the femur shattering echoed across the countryside, Natsumi's left leg collapsed. She instantly dropped to her right knee, bending over with a half-strangled shout as she pressed her left hand against the surface of her thigh, no glow evident. Through his Sharingan gaze, Izuna could see the rapidly spreading bruise beneath her bronzed skin.

The berserker cackled again, and made a show of digging the point of one axe blade into his skin, just below the clavicle, and tugged it with vicious jerks down and crosswise, flaying open a ragged laceration that bit through skin and muscle from chest to hipbone. "Praise Jashin," the berserker cried with a moan that would've been better placed in a bedroom. "As we share our suffering, the heathens are baptized and brought into Jashin's beloved folds."

With her back turned towards them, they didn't see if an identical ragged laceration split open Natsumi's torso, but they saw the stream of blood drip to the ground.

As Tobirama's breath hitched, Izuna realized in an instant how his clanspeople had died. The men had attacked, and the berserker waded through them, shrugging off their assault with the same supernatural ease that allowed him to survive Natsumi's blows. He would've slowly collected the blood of the attacking Uchiha men with swipes of his axe blade, so that everyone was pulled into this bizarre ritual at the same time. _That_ was why everyone's wounds had been identical.

Natsumi's elbows flounced as her hands moved through several hand signs, and her chakra flared – Izuna immediately copied the jutsu. "Water bullet!" She spat, and the attack struck the berserker's left upper arm, drilling a precise hole through it. His grip on the axe wavered only slightly as an identical hole immediately formed in Natsumi's left upper arm. "Hey!" She clamped her right hand over it, but the blood didn't stop.

The berserker's pelvis rocked forward. "Yeeeesssss. Everything that happens to _me_ will happen to you. We are linked."

Natsumi's breathing was ragged. "Everything?"

" _Everything_."

Her hand flared green. The hole healed over, a quick patchwork job that only knit muscles and skin together to keep the arm functioning and to stop the bleeding.

The hole in the berserker's arm remained open and bleeding.

It was Natsumi's turn to cackle. "It's a _one-way_ link!" She stood upright, gingerly transferring her weight to her left leg, shifting her stance as the berserker's glee melted into an expression of uncertainty. She moved her green glowing hand to her left thigh. "All the damage _you_ incur is what will get shared with me, but all the recovery _I_ make doesn't get shared with you." Over her shoulder, she yelled, "Uchiha, this is now a two-man job!"

He was beside her in an instant, moving too quickly for a stunned Tobirama to interfere. "What do you need me to do?"

"First thing first, _you_ get rid of the arm with the axe, and _I_ find out if I can reattach severed limbs."

Izuna was must faster than Natsumi, even faster than the berserker. It took three enhanced blows with his wakizashi, however, and very fluid dodging from the berserker's limbs that the Sharingan predicted, to cleave the left arm away from the shoulder. A quick glance into the berserker's eyes sent another shiver racing up and down Izuna's spine. He kicked the arm out of the circle and dodged backwards, skidding to a halt beside Natsumi and raising his sword upward to parry any follow-through attacks.

"No one invited you to my party," Natsumi told Tobirama irritably as he bent over Natsumi with her cleaved arm in his own hands.

"You don't have enough free limbs to hold your severed arm in place while you heal," Tobirama snapped.

"Oh, right. Huh. I guess I should've thought that through a little better." Her hand was glowing green still as he carefully pressed the limb where it belonged – blood gushed around them. The famed Uzumaki regeneration also worked in Natsumi's favor, as steam rose from the laceration that crossed her chest while her flesh knit together.

The berserker roared. He dug and clawed his other fingers through his stump.

"Ow! Owowow you sonovabitch!" Tobirama kept her severed arm in place with one hand, and wrapped his other arm around her torso as Natsumi's legs jerked violently and collapsed. He gently lowered her to the ground, amidst flattened prairie grasses, and summoned a bubble of water to wrap around her healing hand and severed limb – the bubble of water stopped blood from spurting from the large, exposed arteries.

"He's not stepping out of the ritual circle," Izuna whispered.

The berserker flung his hand wide and chanted in his native language. Izuna, seeing the arm and axe outside of the circle twitching, flashed across the site and pinned the axe down with a heavy foot.

"Dibs!" Natsumi yelled. Umeboshi was a brown blur, growling and snarling as he raced across the prairie. He sunk his teeth into the fleshy wrist, and braced his paws against the dirt as the arm elevated in the air and spun towards the berserker. The arm pulled towards the berserker with such force that it slid through Umeboshi's teeth, flaying the skin open like ribbons.

"Hey!" Izuna flickered his gaze back to Natsumi and Tobirama at Tobirama's shout. "The teeth! She's not getting injured!" Natsumi's severed arm didn't have any identical lacerations caused by teeth. And it wasn't even severed anymore – she had forced bones to reattach, and the muscles were now stretching towards each other, half under the influence of her Mystic Palm, half uncontrolled from the Uzumaki regeneration.

Izuna felt a smile stretch across his face. "I'm going to incinerate the arm and see if it's as indestructible as the rest of him. Release the arm, Umeboshi!" With a whine, Umeboshi opened his jaws, and the hovering arm shot back towards the berserker. Before it reached the ritual circle, Izuna freed the burning flames he sensed behind his right eye – the detached limb was instantly engulfed in the black fire of Amaterasu.

The berserker screamed again, this time in rage.

"Dibs on the axe!" Natsumi called, which was still pinned beneath Izuna's foot.

The berserker slammed his right fist into his right thigh – the femur shattered from sheer force. The berserker stayed upright as Natsumi gritted her teeth and flinched. Izuna left the axe behind as he shunshinned sideways to hover in front of Natsumi. She flickered her gaze up to his, steely with pride and utterly lacking in any fear, either of further injury or even her own death, and he pulled her into a genjutsu that would last only a heartbeat in real time.

 _"The fucking hell, Uchiha!" He had pulled them into an illusionary world of the Uchiha winter fortress, and filled it with a fog so she couldn't get a closer look at the structures. Between the emptiness of life, and the faded edges of white, it looked like an eerie ghost town. "I don't have time for this shit!"_

 _"This is happening at the speed of thought. It's the only thing we have time for. How much can you take?"_

 _She planted her hands on her hips. "Take what?"_

 _"You're linked to the berserker. I know how the berserkers fight now, I know why they managed to survive and slaughter my clanspeople, but I still don't know how to kill one. Every strike I make, every injury I cause, you're going to experience every single thing. You can heal from the injuries, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the berserker will die from the injuries."_

 _"I already know I can repair severed limbs. We know you can set fire to those pieces. Whittle him down, piece by piece. Even if we can't kill him, there's not much he can do if he's missing his arms and legs."_

 _"Can you survive decapitation?"_

 _Natsumi tapped her chin in thought. "Probably not. I don't think I'd be able to heal myself fast enough to recover from garroting, either, even if we kept the spine intact. I haven't yet figured out how to use the Mystic Palm to improve red blood cell reproduction, so I'm still at risk for shock from blood loss. At the rate we're going, I'll just die faster from exsanguination if you try to separate head from shoulder."_

 _"Can you survive evisceration?"_

 _She wrinkled her nose at him. "I already told you, Uchiha, intestines **stink** when you cut into them. I can deal with getting dismembered, but having to smell something like that on top of everything else is bordering on torture." After a moment of studying his face, her eyes narrowed suspiciously. "You **do** want torture." _

_"Not you," Izuna said quickly. Given this woman's strength, stamina, abilities, and the fact that she could **squash** him with a **whale** , he was better off not making enemies with her. "After this, I probably owe you at least two good favors. It's just…" He took a deep breath, and braced himself for the truth. She seemed like she would appreciate it. _

_The fog swirled, and revealed the bodies. "When a woman is five months pregnant, do you know how large the baby is?" Natsumi said nothing as she walked closer, and then crouched at the funeral pyre, ready to be lit. "My wife tried to defend herself with a wok. He eviscerated her. I… I want him to feel everything that she felt."_

 _Natsumi placed her hand, palm-down, flat on the pyre, and compared the size of it against the smaller of the two bodies present. Then she stood up. "Ah, fuck." She stretched her neck, rocking her head side to side. "Whatever you dish out, just make sure you give me time in between to heal enough that I keep on surviving. If you can get him out of that ritual circle, then you can chop off his head. I still want to live until I'm a hundred years old."_

 _"Why?"_

 _She grinned at him. "Why not?"_

Izuna pulled them out of the genjutsu. Natsumi flashed him a smile that showed all her teeth and grit. "Make it hurt," she told him. She lifted her glowing green hand up and patted Tobirama's shoulder. "Let Izuna do his work," she said softly as Izuna stalked towards the berserker, blade flickering silver in the sunlight. "He's got permission to make it as brutal as I can endure."

* * *

 **Author's addendum:** Koppun roughly translates into powdered bone. Also, Natsumi's guardian should've been a magpie, on account of her greedy love for shiny/fancy/powerful objects.


	6. Chapter 6

**Author's note:** I love worldbuilding. And Hashimoto's worldbuilding - especially on summons - was always strangely lackluster. I was under the impression that it was rare, and people would, like, pull out their summons like an ace in the hole. And then it never seemed to go anywhere... Frankly, Temari should've unleashed her weasel on the world. Or the Ten Tails. (Weasels are nasty, rabid little fighters...)

* * *

When all was said and done, the cutting edge of Izuna's wakizashi was chipped from striking bone too many times as his right eye throbbed and bled, Umeboshi's muzzle and paws were coated red, Natsumi's arms and legs twitched and spasmed as she bitched about nerve damage, and Tobirama looked like he really regretted the variety of life choices that led him to being the sensor attached to their group.

After dismembering the berserker, one limb at a time, eviscerating him, tearing out stomach organs and at least two lung lobes, Umeboshi finally succeeded in dragging the screeching, changing berserker out of the ritual circle. When Izuna drew the blade across the throat, ripping at flesh because his blade was too damaged for a smooth slice, the berserker gurgled too much to continue chanting. Natsumi's neck remained intact.

Izuna stared into the berserker's eyes – stared _past_ them at the other, at the god who had watched and suffered with the berserker, sharing pain and frustration – and then set the body on fire with the Amaterasu. As the black flames wrapped around the remains, he let the Sharingan fade away. The shape of his surroundings blurred and the colors muted, shadows deeper than they should be. He impatiently swiped the trail of blood from his face with the back of his hand. His breathing was harsh and the one ear he could still hear out of rushed with the sound of pounding blood. He stumbled around the craters that littered the prairie from Natsumi's exploded ivory beads, carefully skirted the five burning geysers of black, and then plopped down beside Tobirama, who sat on the ground and braced Natsumi's upper body against his torso. Her heavy breasts draped over Tobirama's forearm.

Natsumi's twitching leg kicked Izuna in the ribs. "Where's my axe?"

"Ask your damn dog to fetch it."

Natsumi sounded puzzled. "You mean Tobirama? I wouldn't exactly call him a dog."

"He meant Umeboshi," Tobirama snapped.

She responded with a disdainful sniff. "That's just insulting to my ninken partner."

Despite not being directed to, Umeboshi still dragged the axe over to Natsumi. "Oh, you _are_ a good boy!" Natsumi's arm twitched and nearly smacked Tobirama in the head as she tried to scratch Umeboshi behind the ears. "I bled for this damn thing, it's mine." She somehow managed not to slice her foot off as she greedily dragged the axe onto her lap. "So," she began, "now we know how the berserkers fight. We know that they can't be taken down with blunt force. I'm pretty sure that this special black fire of yours isn't something that other Uchiha can do, otherwise your clan would've been bragging about it for the last two generations."

Izuna shrugged listlessly. He couldn't say that Natsumi was wrong. As far as he was aware, not even Madara was able to summon the black flames of Amaterasu, and Madara had been able to explore the gifts of his Mangekyo for the last two years. Izuna had barely awakened his two days ago. _And already I'm half-blind_ , he thought, feeling rather put out with himself.

"Even without the black flames," Tobirama began, "we can still dismantle the berserkers. While they do appear to have some sort of functioning immortality – assuming that each berserker responsible for each attack has the same gift from their god – a head separated from the torso with both buried deep beneath rocks and earth, and limbs scattered throughout the continent renders them useless. The key is to strike them fast and hard without giving them the opportunity to establish a link through blood."

Natsumi hummed in thought. "We Inuzuka women aren't likely to provide much help when it comes to dismantling – we don't have the sharp weapons. Well, the others don't. I do," she declared proudly, no doubt in reference to the axe that was too large and too unfamiliar for her to effectively wield in a battle against someone like the berserker, but she evidently wouldn't let little details like that influence her poor self-awareness. "But we can scatter the body parts throughout Fire, Wind, and Mist, and no one will ever be able to locate and put them back together."

Tobirama's voice was hesitant. "Of the men we brought together, only my brother and I would be able to take on a berserker. The others lack the skill or strength."

"Of the Uchiha men who accompanied, only my brother could," Izuna said, deciding it was best to be truthful. He dropped his face into the palms of his hands, and desperately wished that he could sleep. "I'm not in any shape right now to take on anything that isn't more dangerous than a rabid squirrel. I need to sleep at least a week."

"All right. We could all use some sleep," Natsumi replied. Then she poked Tobirama in the side. ""Let's go have victory sex in the bushes before the rest of our group gets here."

"… _excuse_ me?!"

"Victory sex." She waved one hand, but it flailed and slapped Tobirama in the nose. "Look, my body has been pumping out so many endorphins what with getting hacked to pieces that I'm higher than a kite. The rest of the group will be here in about six hours. That gives us time for four rounds, maybe five or six or more, depending on your stamina and recovery time, and we can even squeeze in a cat nap in the end."

"What makes you think I _want_ to have sex with _you_?"

Izuna looked up from his hands. Natsumi was giving Tobirama a deadpan look, while Tobirama looked uncomfortable and unusually young. Very deliberately, moving slowly so she could control the jerking movement of her arms, Natsumi reached up and rested an index finger on the tip of her nose. "If I can identify people from over a hundred kilometers away, what makes you think I _can't_ smell if someone isn't interested in me? Besides, the only other one here is Izuna, since I figure that you really aren't interested in Umeboshi, but who knows – they say that sex between rivals is always exciting. I wouldn't mind watching, if you two do, you know, wanna try getting it on."

Tobirama immediately glared at Izuna.

"Don't look at me," Izuna said to Tobirama. "I'm too exhausted to have any victory sex with you." Then, remembering what Hashirama had told Tobirama before they parted this morning, he added, " _You_ volunteered for this, and someone has to take something for the team. She's already been dismembered and eviscerated, and I've used up eighty percent of my chakra. The least _you_ can do is sacrifice your virginity, seeing as how all you _did_ do was watch."

"I held random body parts in the correct places so she could reattach them. _We,_ " Tobirama indicated Izuna and himself, "are not a team. You're not even my rival. And I'm not a virgin!" Then he squeaked and yanked Natsumi's wandering hand out of his trousers. "Stop that!"

"Higher than a kite," Natsumi replied, licking and nibbling Tobirama's neck.

"I thought that _no_ was supposed to mean _no_ ," Tobirama squirmed and tried to push Natsumi away as gently as possible, while not grabbing anywhere near her bare breasts, hips, or thighs. It left him worthlessly poking her arms.

Natsumi drew back and glared. "If you can tell me no with a straight face that you absolutely have no interest in having sex with me, I shall never pursue you again in my life. You shall be totally written off."

Tobirama froze. "Never?"

"Absolutely never. I'll go after your brother, and I'll talk my sister into seducing Touka."

"That's… I'm pretty sure that's extortion. And Touka doesn't swing that way – she prefers her lovers to be masculine."

"Shinzou is more masculine than most men. And you'll know that you _could've_ had a wild night in the bushes with me, but you threw that all away because you're embarrassed to have an Uchiha in hearing who'll critique your techniques." Natsumi leveled a furious glare at Izuna, as if he were to blame for Tobirama's reluctance.

Izuna sighed. "I promise not to critique anyone's techniques, tonight." Then, softly, he added, "I would much rather be alone, right now. I'd like to thank the gods for their gift, that I was allowed to slay the murderer of my wife."

"…fine. Just for tonight, and only because you got dismembered and eviscerated. Cleaning you up in the creek counts as foreplay, right?"

"Yay! Creek and foreplay, sure. Let's give Izuna some space, or he might even give you some tips." She licked and nibbled at Tobirama's neck and collarbone.

"Humping away works for men," Izuna declared, enjoying Tobirama's embarrassment almost as much as he would enjoy killing the ratfink, "but women need a little more _hands-on_ attention if you want to give them pleasure. And that was a _tip_ , not an actual critique!"

The glare Izuna received was murderous, but Tobirama seemed willing to retreat back into the bushes then, dragging a very willing, very giggly Natsumi along. She left the axe on the ground beside Izuna and Umeboshi, along with stern orders that it was still hers by right of conquest, don't touch it.

Umeboshi huffed a sigh, and then shifted to press his body tightly against Izuna's body. Izuna felt numb and cold, so the thick fur was an unexpected blessing. And as Umeboshi dropped his heavy head in Izuna's lap and licked at his palm, as Izuna pressed his face against the fur, it was also nice to have something to wipe away the onslaught of tears.

oOoOoOo

"We don't have time for you to lollygag," Shinzou declared, glaring at the Senju and the Uchiha men who struggled to scale the steep mountain side with their heavy armor. "Look, I can move faster than you, and _I'm_ the one who's breastfeeding."

Madara glared at her. Shinzou was also wearing her poncho, which hid her multitasking from his view. "And if _someone_ had waited until morning to scale the fucking cliffs instead of insisting that we push through the dark, we would be moving a lot more quickly."

"I thought you Uchiha could see in the dark with your pinwheel eyes," she shot back impatiently. "Ditch the armor. It isn't doing any good except holding you back."

"She's not wrong," said Hashirama, untangling some thorny bushes from his hair. "We can always come back for our armor."

" _You_ ditch your armor," Madara snapped. He would be damned if he allowed a single hotheaded woman set his men up for catastrophic wounds or even death if they engaged any of the South Sea raiders without proper protection.

"Let's just wait until we hear what Tobi, Natsumi, and your brother have to say." Hashirama carefully stepped away from the bushes, grabbing at cracks and crevices so he wouldn't fall off the cliff again. Judicious use of vines growing out of the cliff had saved him from an uncomfortable landing. "If the armor will do us some good, we'll keep it, and try to figure out how to pick up the pace. If it doesn't do us any good, we'll leave it behind, and come back for it after we rescue our children." He accidentally stepped on Madara's foot, and apologized when Madara hissed at him. "How much further do we have to go?"

"Twenty kilometers," Shinzou replied with a huff. "We should be there by morning."

oOoOoOo

When Tobirama and Natsumi returned to Izuna, he had already made a fire out of the dried branches that Umeboshi, with a polite request, had fetched him. He rested beside the fire with his head supported against Umeboshi's haunches, enjoying the warmth at his back as he watched the stars emerge. At least, he was trying to watch them emerge. His vision was worse than he realized when he could barely make out the blot of the half-moon overhead.

"That was fast," Izuna told Natsumi as Tobirama dropped her beside Umeboshi. Izuna craned his neck to look at Tobirama. "Did you get some fun out of it?" He remembered his own fumbling attempts with Honami when they had first married, and how embarrassingly quick two minutes can be. The last time he had been with his wife, the night before he left with Madara to discuss potential treaties, he had been as thorough as he could be in their lovemaking, branding her body with memories just in case he never came back. He had never expected to face the daunting realization of outliving his noncombatant wife.

"He's a very quick learner," Natsumi replied regally. "And while I would've enjoyed a few extra rounds, I'm actually more tired than I realized." She yawned. "That berserker took way more out of me than I expected. Fights that long are few and far between, for me."

" _And_ you wanted ramen," Tobirama said as he rifled through Natsumi's pack.

"And I wanted ramen. Orgasms just don't replace actual sustenance."

Tobirama prepared Natsumi a tin of curry ramen, and Izuna was pretty sure that it had been a deliberate decision on the ratfink's part, despite his denial otherwise when Natsumi complained about the flavor choice.

oOoOoOo

It was midmorning by the time Madara and his companions reached Izuna and party. Madara had expected a battle site – the craters, blackened prairie grasses, and pools of rust-colored blood didn't surprise him in the least. The five burning rings of otherwordly black flames did surprise. And so did the sight of his brother, looking half-dead with old streaks of blood trailing down his face from eyes to jaw.

"I thought Natsumi was the one who was supposed to fight," Madara growled as he crouched next to Izuna. Izuna was seated on the ground, next to Natsumi. Both of them supported their backs against Umeboshi; Natsumi's limbs jerked and twitched, and when her foot nearly clobbered Madara in the jaw, he was petty sure that it was not as accidental as Natsumi claimed.

"Well," Izuna began, "you know how battle plans never survive the first brush with the enemy?"

"It was glorious," Natsumi said, holding onto a gigantic battle axe with a ferocious possessiveness that Madara could appreciate. Also, he approved of gigantic weapons, just on principle. "But I needed a wee bit of help."

"A lot of help," Izuna supplied.

"A _smidgeon_ of help. I did most of the work. _You_ only involved yourself the last twenty minutes, and I still had to survive what you did to the berserker."

"We're doomed," Tobirama declared from where he was seated in the grasses, outside of Natsumi's reach. Tobirama appeared rumpled, sweaty, and tired.

"I don't see why you're complaining," Shinzou told Tobirama. "From the smell of it, the only thing you did was fuck my sister. At least you did a half-way decent job on it," she added as Natsumi gave her two thumb's up.

"That," Hashirama said sternly to Shinzou, "was very rude. Tobi's only role was to act as the sensor for the group. That he rolled in the bushes with your sister is just a bonus for the victors."

Tobirama covered his face in his hands. "Really?" he muttered. " _That_ is what people are focusing on?" Izuna carefully reached over and patted him on the shoulder.

"He took one for the team," Izuna said to Madara, smirking. "T'was a noble thing that this Senju did; I would not allow anyone to belittle the sacrifices he made."

"What did you name your little girl?" Natsumi asked as Hashirama held Tobirama back from throttling Izuna. "Sorry about not saving anything to make a baby rattle. Uchiha got a little fire-happy."

Shinzou carefully cradled the infant, which hung from a sling that was draped around her neck. "Koppun." After a pause, she added, "In honor of Hashirama's sacrifice. He let me hold his hand."

"I think," said Madara, as he took Izuna's face in his hands and peered into eyes that didn't (or couldn't) focus on Madara's face, "we've had enough lollygagging. What happened?"

Tobirama provided a detailed and thorough account of the fight against the berserker. As the one who had watched and witnessed the battle and Natsumi and Izuna's involvement, he provided the greatest amount of details. Natsumi and Izuna provided a minimal amount of information – Natsumi on how the berserker was able to withstand her strength, and Izuna on how he had managed to defeat the berserker.

"We _are_ doomed," Shinzou declared at the end of the report as she worked on burping the infant with a heavy hand to the baby's back. "Unless _you_ can pull some mystic magical fire out of your ass?" she pointedly asked Madara.

He gritted his teeth. The sooner he never had to deal with the abrasiveness of the Inuzuka clan head, the better. "That is not a particular talent of my Sharingan." He shouldn't have to spill clan secrets to outsiders. That he was forced to do so was reason enough to slaughter every single South Sea raider who set foot on the continent.

"Well, that's some inconvenient bullshit," Shinzou said. Then she looked at Hashirama. "Do you have any bright ideas? Because if cleaving a head in two with an axe doesn't do it, my clan and I are limited on what assistance we can provide in taking down the berserkers. We just don't have the skills with weapons, much less the weapons themselves, to dismember immortal assholes."

Hashirama was silent as he mulled over the report. He considered all the Uchiha and Senju present, then he studied the Inuzuka women while rubbing his chin. "How many have reached the beaches?"

Natsumi took a deep breath. "Well, the Uchiha and Senju groups finally reached the beach. They're gathered with the Sarutobi and Inuzuka groups. There's the three berserkers there – well, two berserker. The other one doesn't smell right, the one that hit the Sarutobi group. There are two berserkers with the Akimichi group, though, and they're about thirty kilometers away from meeting up with the others."

"So we still have two groups with two or three fighters of unparallel skill and an unfortunate gift of immortality," Hashirama said. "I think if we can hit the beaches before the Akimichi group reaches them, we can take out the three fighters present, and secure the children. We should have enough time to regroup and hit the Akimichi berserkers before they have too much of an idea of what happened at the beaches." As a soft autumn breeze rustled through his hair, as it made the golden grasses of the prairie ripple like waves across the sea, he added, "It wouldn't hurt to bring in some near-by allies."

"The Uzumaki clan?" Shinzou guessed. Madara did his best to disguise a shudder at the mention.

"They've got fuuinjutsu," Hashirama replied, almost defensively. "The rarest and best of the Uzumaki fuuinjutsu masters can bend time and space, and if that doesn't sound like a viable way to defeat immortality, then we're all, quite frankly, screwed."

"I supposed it's a good thing that their scent indicates that they're already on the move," Shinzou replied. "The Sarutobi clan probably reached out to them, because they're sending their five strongest fighters and fuuinjutsu experts towards the beaches. They're a good thirty kilometers away though."

Hashirama sighed wistfully. "Your nose is amazing."

Natsumi waved her hand, and nearly side-swiped Madara. "Ooooh! I've got ramen tins to trade in!"

"How far away from the beaches are we?" Madara asked. He eased out of Natsumi's reach even though it meant backing away from his brother.

"Sixty-five kilometers, give or take a kilometer."

"And the Akimichi is _how_ far away from the beaches?"

Shinzou shrugged. "Thirty-five."

Hashirama groaned and covered his face. "We'll never make it to the beaches first, in time."

"Don't be so fatalistic," Shinzou replied. "We still have some tricks up our sleeves. Metaphorically speaking. We aren't actually wearing any sleeves. But your armor has to come off. My sister's fight is a good demonstration on how the armor isn't going to protect your lives, not if blood from a cut on the cheek is enough to get you killed. Speed is vital in these battles, and you're just weighed down by a walking tin death trap."

Madara and Hashirama didn't even argue, even though their armor was built from material much sturdier than tin. As they started removing their armor, their men followed suit. They carefully stored the armor under the bushes and the cottonwoods, protecting them from potential weathering. As they did so, Shinzou pulled Bashira over to Natsumi, and the trio engaged in a fierce battle of whispering. When everyone had finally gathered together, Shinzou raised her voice to a near-shout to address everyone at once.

"There are no more mountains between us and the sea, from here. My clanswoman has agreed to bring in some transportation. It has the added benefit that we'll have get a chance to breathe and conserve our stamina in the traveling. However, you all _will_ be polite, and there is no kicking allowed, understand?" Shinzou leveled a stare at every single man until she received a verbal assent. Then she nodded at Bashira. "It's all on you."

Bashira pushed through the crowding and towards the prairie. She deliberately gave the five circles of black flames a wide berth. She jabbed a nail of her right hand into the palm of her left hand, tearing open a laceration. Then she plucked several long chestnut colored hairs from her head – the same number as everyone present, Madara noticed, twenty-eight hairs – and coated them with blood from the laceration. After carefully placing the hairs on the ground, her back turned towards them, Bashira made several seals – _summoning_ , Madara realized with a breathless wonder, _how on earth did these barbaric women manage to obtain something so precious as a summoning contract?_ – and pumped more than three-quarters of her chakra into the summoning.

Horses – elegant, white and silver and gold and bronze, twice as large as any horse Madara had ever seen, although only the warlord tribes of Wind and the samurai from Iron used horses – appeared.

"Hi," said Bashira, nearly toppling over in exhaustion. "My companions and I are in dire need of a lift to the beach, sixty-some kilometers south of here. We're going to fetch the children that were stolen from us."

One horse – not the largest, but its coffee-brown mane was longer and silkier than the others with shells and feathers woven into it and its fur shone with the glimmer of bronze – stepped forward. It lowered its great head to nuzzle Bashira's hair. "We have heard of what happened," the horse said. It had a deep voice, like a man. "News of the foreigners invading our lands, hurting our people, all the name of its dark, unwelcomed god, has reached our ears. We shall lend you our assistance, even to those whom we share no contract with."

Bashira grabbed a handful of the silky mane and pulled herself to her feet. Her expression was young and beautiful as she threw a smile over her shoulder at the others. "They're giving us a lift! Remember – don't kick! They aren't your ordinary, _common_ horses."

"How do we stay on them?" Hashirama asked as he approached.

"Stick your butt on them firmly like you're sticking your feet to a tree. If you don't have the chakra control, hang on tight."

Madara had never ridden a horse before. This was just another part of this entire adventure that he could've lived his entire life never experiencing. As the men figured out the most politest way to mount without kicking each other, or the horses – the horses were quite vocal in expressing their displeasure with any undue rough handling – he sidled up to Natsumi. She had a glazed, almost drunken look in her eyes, so she was probably going to be more forthcoming with information than Shinzou.

"So," he began, crouching close to her, but still not in reach of her twitching limbs, "you flattened the berserker with a whale."

"It was a beauty," Natsumi declared. "The opportunity to summon a whale is few and far between, seeing as how Inuzuka women aren't exactly sea-faring lassies."

While the Inuzuka clan did a lot of roaming, their preferred territory – even if their territory was technically considered property of another clan, like the Nara – mainly covered the thick forests and plains on the other side of the Tora Mountains. "I'm assuming that Bashira's chosen guardians are horses. I wondered why some of you have animals painted on your chests… assuming that Boshi has an animal."

Natsumi grinned. "Boshi says that she's exploring a new art form – 'abstract', she calls it – but really, she's just not that good at drawing boars." Natsumi's attempt at making air quotations with her fingers nearly jabbed out Tobirama's eyes.

… _really?_ Madara squinted at Boshi's chest. The dust bunnies/moths/butterflies didn't even faintly resemble a potential pig-like shape. "I see," he said.

"You don't have to pretend that she knows what she's drawing. We make fun of her all the time for it."

"It would seem like a boar would be a more appropriate guardian for you, than for Boshi."

"One would think so, but _I_ have always been larger than life." Natsumi preened at that, as if having a personality the size of a whale was anything to be bragged about. Given the exasperated look that Izuna sent her, his brother shared in Madara's sentiment. "But we don't pick the guardians. They pick us."

Ah, so they _didn't_ have a number of summon contracts just laying around.

"Then why," Tobirama began, "did your whale ask you about geese, lions, hedgehogs, and damn squirrels?"

"I," Natsumi declared, "am the Queen of Summons!" She managed to raise both hands, eight fingers extended in total, without poking anyone in the eye. "I have eight summons! I want _more_!"

"How do you get the summon contracts?" Izuna asked.

"I bully my clanswomen into letting me sign theirs, once they pass muster with their guardian."

"How do you get a guardian?" Izuna asked, when Madara and Tobirama stared at Natsumi in wonder (Tobrirama) and shocked stupor (Madara).

"The secret," Natsumi began, "is you gotta have a lot of chakra, and then you summon. Just like that. As long as you haven't already signed a contract, if you have enough chakra to invest in the summon, whatever is the most fitting to your personality will pull you into their plane of existence." She paused for a moment, her expression distant. "Well, _usually_ whatever is most fitting will pull you onto their plane of existence. But you only got one shot at it. If you don't invest enough chakra, it slams shut on you, and all future contracts, even a physical contract, will reject you. And you're probably wondering why I would freely offer this information," she added cheerfully as Shinzou approached them. "See, it's not an actual secret. Some of our clanswomen never attempt it; others did, and were unsuccessful. The thing is, there's always a lot of things eagerly reaching out to grab you, things from the darkness that aren't meant to see light – when you summon without a contract, you don't always grab onto an actual summon. One of our aunts actually summoned the Two-Tailed Demon, and let me tell you, that was a _big_ mess to clean up. We never did find all of Aunt Tsume's limbs. Or her head. Man, I would give my left kidney to have a contract with the Two-Tails."

"Duly noted," said Tobirama with the tired air of someone who was intimately familiar with handling Natsumi's left kidney.

Madara cleared his throat. "I was given to understand that a person can only hold one summoning contract."

"Oh, a contract isn't valid if you sign it the same as another." Natsumi waved her hand, as if she cleared common misconceptions of summon contacts everywhere she went. She ignored Shinzou's approach. "You have to sign it different each time. If you sign one the same as another, the second signature is always invalid, and you don't get a second shot as signing."

Shinzou stood beside Natsumi and waited until Natsumi had finished speaking. "You can't ride by yourself, you'll fall off with the way you keep twitching."

Natsumi immediately attached herself to Tobirama like a twitching leech. He sighed as she half-smothered him beneath her tangled waves of red hair and unreasonably-sized bosom. "I'll keep her on the back of a horse," he said, slightly muffled. It took some finagling to put the axe in a makeshift sling that Natsumi tied to her back, as she refused to part with it.

Since the two had to ride together, that left one horse unmounted – a dainty-looking mare with fur the color of molten gold, and her mane and tail as white as a spark. After a quick conference, Bashira sent the horse off to the Uzumaki clan with Hashirama's message. The mare was golden blur across the plains, making a direct path south-west of them.

"Are we ready?" Bashira asked, taking the lead with her mount. Everyone was too focused on staying upright to answer, so with a nod from Shinzou, they headed for the beaches.


	7. Chapter 7

**Author's note:** The seven-tailed demon (the Nanabi) is considered lucky. So, uh, in the South Seas culture, Loki adopted her as his daughter. This totally makes sense to me - one must have a lot of luck (and stealth, and creativity) to succeed with mischief. The kusarigama that Madara uses is a scythe-on-a-chain. Also, I live in a high-plains desert where it's both really, really hot in the summer, and it's really, really cold in the winter, so when it comes to the warlord tribes of Wind versus the clans of Cloud, I win. :D

* * *

Horses, Madara knew, could run fast – the samurai horses has a long-distance gait that allowed them to travel up to thirty-five kilometers in an hour. The warlord tribes of Wind bred their horses for long-distance races and battle, and considered the horses to be actual members of their family. Such horses could easily travel up to a hundred kilometers in a single day, in a desert that was considered one of the most brutal and uninhabitable terrains of the continent. (The warlords proclaimed it quite habitable, _thankyouverymuch_ , but only the toughest could survive, so they felt that everyone else were weak and pampered, including the Shinobi clans of non-deserts. Some of the Shinobi clans of Cloud were quite loud in proclaiming that the warlord tribes of Wind didn't know the _meaning_ of strength if they had no idea how to thrive in a climate that had snow thirty meters deep half the year, and frequently cold enough to freeze piss leaving a man's body before it even hit the ground.)

The summoned horses, like other contracts, were beings that enhanced their abilities with chakra, manipulating it as easily as any shinobi. They easily traveled fifty kilometers in an hour, while the Akimichi group had only managed to travel ten kilometers. When they were only fifteen kilometers away from the beaches, Shinzou called the group to a halt.

"Let's figure some things out," Shinzou said. "I've been thinking about that berserker my sister fought. I've got a plan to take out the berserkers with the Akimichi kids. I need four Uchiha and four Senju who are willing to follow my orders. Also, I need to borrow your axe," she told Natsumi.

Natsumi scrunched her face up like she wanted to angrily protest. "You don't have the skill with weapons."

"What skill do you need with an axe? It's sharp, it's heavy, just whack at bodies with it until the bodies come apart. I've got the strength for that." Shinzou rolled her eyes. "Look, I promise to give the damn thing back. I just need something sharp and hefty to hit the berserkers with, and I'm going to use my own summons to help me with dismemberment. I don't have fire to destroy the berserker, but my summons can take the body pieces far and wide, and bury them so deep that only an Inuzuka could track down the remains to put them back together."

"What do you need our men for?" Hashirama asked.

"We don't know the abilities of the other South Sea raiders, the ones that aren't berserkers." As she spoke, Shinzou dismounted and began fiddling with the pack and sling on her ninken's back. "It would be foolish to assume that those four aren't fighters of some sort. There are eight Akimichi children. The four fastest of the men accompanying me can snatch the eight children and run, and the other four can engage the four South Sea raiders."

"And you are going to be able to take on _two_ berserkers all by yourself?" Madara demanded, feeling his eyebrows shoot up somewhere close to his hairline. She had just given birth _yesterday_. She was still leaking fluids that weren't all milk. (He refused to think that she was a greater warrior than he was, even if he hadn't given birth… he could totally take on two berserkers, singlehandedly, if it meant that he just needed to avoid letting them nick off with any of his blood.)

Shinzou pulled a napping Koppun from the sling that was tied to her torso, from beneath her poncho, and slid the baby into the sling that she had manipulated out of her ninken's pack. "Did I say I was taking the berserker on all by myself?" she asked irritably. "No. I said I'm going to use my own summons. Which _you_ don't need to know anything about." She added the last with a dark look sent towards Natsumi. "You'll have to watch my baby while I'm absent. I expect you to stay out of the fighting. Do you promise?"

Natsumi growled and munched on Tobirama's hair. He twitched and visibly fought down the urge to shove her off the horse. "I promise," Natsumi grumbled.

"And do you promise to keep your promise better than _he_ did?" Shinzou pointed at Izuna, who had enough vision left to bristle at her pointing. "Because I recall that _he_ promised his brother that he wouldn't engage with the berserker, and that didn't stop him."

Natsumi munched a moment longer on Tobirama's hair, stopping only when he elbowed her harshly. She was protected by the excessive cushioning of her chest. " _If_ I summon, that doesn't count, because I'm not physically engaging myself in battle."

Shinzou double-checked the security of her baby, and then remounted her summoned horse. "That's probably the best agreement I'll get out of you," she muttered. Then she turned towards Madara and Hashirama. "Sit on her if you have to. So, who's coming with me?"

Madara chose a mix of his men – two of the fastest, two of the strongest. And while he wasn't sure that Hashirama did the same, Hashirama was direct in telling Shinzou which two were the fastest. After a brief moment, Izuna pushed forward. "I'll go with you," he told Shinzou. Natsumi had a tendency to bristle whenever she was confronted. Shinzou hunkered down, like she was gathering herself to lunge at a person's throat. The contrast between the two sisters was almost remarkable to watch, if it weren't for the fact that Shinzou was focusing on Izuna.

"What good would you be?" Shinzou growled.

"I've got enough left in me to set a few things on fire, in case you get ganged up."

Shinzou hunkered down even more, like an ever-tightening spring. "Don't get in my way, Uchiha." After Shinzou received assurance from another Inuzuka woman that she would wetnurse the baby in Shinzou's absence, and Shinzou had obtained Natsumi's axe (it had to be pried out of Natsumi's grip – she claimed a muscle spasm locked her fist, but given her bristling petulance, Madara strongly suspected that Natsumi's locked fist was deliberate – it was like watching two toddlers squabble over a desired toy, and the stronger toddler won), Shinzou, Izuna, and their small group broke away from the larger group, heading northwest towards the Akimichi group. No ninken followed after them.

Hashirama nudged his mount closer to Madara's. "Since we're standing still at the moment, we need to quickly review what _we're_ going to do when we hit the beaches."

Natsumi immediately raised a fist in the air. "We're going to squash them before they even realize we're there, rip out their throats, dismantle their bodies, piss on their insides, throw the pieces into the longboats, and set the whole thing on fire."

Madara and Hashirama stared at Natsumi. Tobirama pinched the bridge of his nose, as if this woman's blunt tongue was giving him a headache. Madara almost sympathized; Shinzou would've given him a constant headache if he wasn't used to having them from the Sharingan.

"That's all well and good," Hashirama began with far more patience than Madara ever had in a lifetime, "but their sensors will alert the raiders to our presence before we even arrive, which makes ripping out their throats and dismantling their bodies a little difficult. And frankly," he added, with just a touch of sarcasm, "I'm a little too dehydrated from all this traveling to successfully piss on anyone's insides."

"I'm okay with setting things on fire when all is said and done," Madara volunteered. He was Uchiha; being a pyromaniac was as quintessential as the Sharingan.

"It's the whole _said and done_ that we're trying to work out here," Hashirama said. "I'll cover the children with my wood release, our men can take on the non-berserkers, but that still leaves two known berserkers and one unknown that still managed to take on the Sarutobi clan and walk away, seemingly unscathed." He glanced at his brother. "How far away are the Uzumaki?"

"They're ten kilometers from the beach," Tobirama replied. "They're making good distance, traveling the channels."

"Unless we hold back, we'll hit the beaches first." Hashirama turned south, as if he could see the layout of the beaches from fifteen kilometers away. The flat plains was starting to give way to rolling coastal dunes, formed by driving hurricane winds and rains and high flood waters. The ridges of the slip faces were shadowed, thick jagged dark lines that crisscrossed the landscape. Vegetation became sparser the closer they got to the ocean. In the distance, smudged by humidity, was the blue of the ocean waters. Further away than the ocean, steel-grey thunderclouds loomed. "I think it best that we hit the raiders first. The Uzumaki can use the chaos of our attack to circle the perimeter and throw themselves where they can do the most harm."

Having been on the receiving end of the Uzumaki clan's attack two years ago, when Hashirama and Mito first joined forces against the Uchiha, Madara could appreciate the level of harm that the Uzumaki could bring. His gunbai still had scorch marks from Mito's insane fuuinjutsu blast tags.

"It's clear to me," Madara began, "that we engage the berserkers one on one. I'll take the unknown who took on the Sarutobi clan. Who's going to engage the berserkers?"

"I will," said Tobirama. "Unlike that one," he gestured at Natsumi, "I'm well-rested and I know what to expect with a berserker."

"We'll need one more volunteer for the last berserker," Madara said, scanning his men and mentally calculating who was the best at dodging.

"I'll do it." Boshi urged her mount forward. "Aside from Natsumi-sama and Shinzou-sama, I've got the best aerial skills. I can dodge any attack."

"This is true," Natsumi said with a sage nod. "Boshi is a slippery little devil. Plus, her boars are man-eaters, so if push comes to shove, there won't be anything left to set on fire."

Hashirama studied Boshi for a long moment, his face carefully blank as he considered the smudges on Boshi's chest. (Or he was ogling Boshi's chest under cover of careful consideration of her smudges. Madara wasn't so sure, anymore. His men seem to have become marginally immune to the ongoing casual level of nudity displayed around them, and even Madara had grown used the absurd number of nipple rings.) "Very well," he said finally. "I'll trust the judgment of Natsumi-san."

"You shouldn't, really," Tobirama told Hashirama with a tired earnestness.

Hashirama threw his head back and laughed. It echoed across the countryside, and it made Madara's heart sing with delight. "Ah, dear brother, when we met with the Uchiha last week to discuss peace, it never occurred to me that we all would willingly set aside our differences to help clans that we've never before sought any treaties with. It's because of the Inuzuka's judgment that we're all working together. When we bring back the kidnapped children to their respective clans, we'll have shown the world the value of our strengths when we're united in camaraderie, proof that a village that welcomes all clans together is stronger than a single clan trying to survive against the world. The only reason the South Sea raiders were successful in the first place in striking at us and stealing our children is because we are so divided. No, I think that Inuzuka's judgment is quite sound, although," here he gave Tobirama a pointed look, "her taste may be somewhat questionable."

"Too right," Natsumi muttered, completely oblivious to the insult that it was. "I knew that the curry ramen was off. I don't know why I bought so many tins of it. Next time, I'm just sticking with the beef."

oOoOoOo

They didn't stop to strategize. The two known berserkers broke away from the beaches and made their way towards the oncoming group when they were only four kilometers away. Tobirama and Boshi jumped from their mounts and met with the berserkers headlong. Tobirama's blade was quicksilver in the light, and he effortlessly battered his opponent back with jets of water. Boshi, her hair as light and golden as maple syrup, was every bit as quick on her feet as she was in the air, sliding and spinning out of reach, chakra glistening blue at the tips of her nails.

Madara, Hashirama, and the others surged onward, no humans or horses falling back to aid Tobirama or Boshi, although two ninken skidded to a halt and immediately began circling around, darting in to snap at hamstrings when the berserkers, naked except for their short leather boots, were focused upon their human opponents. The berserker who fought Tobirama was armed with a heavy claymore and a reinforced leather shield, while Boshi carefully spun around the reach of her opponent's polearm.

The oncoming storm continued brewing overhead. The autumn skies, which had been azure-blue with nary a wisp of cloud this morning, was swiftly being blotted out by steel-gray thunderheads. Thunder rumbled as lightning streaked towards the ocean in the distance, and a cold wind blasted them. It carried the scents of seawater and rotting death,

As they charged the beaches, Madara saw Natsumi nick her wrist bloody with a tooth. She flashed through four of the five required seals, and held the fifth, charging it with chakra as she bent low over her horse, eyes narrowed with concentration. Madara yanked his mount's head – murmured an apology for using such force on the mane as the horse snorted in anger – and angled towards the unknown that he sensed further away. The beaches this far inland were too rocky, too full of thick boulders to be kind underfoot, separated by pools thick with anemone and jagged shells, and he saw the unknown perched on one of the tallest boulders. It was a woman, hair as long and as blond as her berserker brethren, and she wore a carefully shaped breastplate and girdle that was liberally splattered with blood. Her body was perfectly outlined, perfectly still as she considered them across the distance. Clustered at the foot of her boulder were large crates of wood. Crammed into the crates, too large to fit comfortably, were their kidnapped children.

The raiders – fourteen – leaped the rocks and bellowed wordlessly as they charged towards the summoned horses, armed with various sabers and axes. They didn't move with grace, and Madara detected the roughest, rudimentary use of chakra in their movements. His men, he knew, would have no difficulty in fighting off the raiders.

"Get her away from them!" Hashirama bellowed as he directed his mount to circle to the other side. Natsumi followed over. Beyond the boulders, bobbing with the rising swells of the tides as the winds pushed them, Madara saw the carved stempost of the raiders' longboat – it was curved into the snarling head of a dragon. Nastumi directed her mount towards the longboat, dodging the cluster of fighting bodies as the Uchiha and Senju men met the raiders face on with weapons raised.

Madara's eyes bled red as he leapt free of his mount, lighting upon the boulders. They were already slick from sea spray and waves gaining strength and size from the howling wind. He adjusted his footing accordingly as he steadied himself. The woman, the _other_ , hadn't moved from her position. As he approached closer, she gracefully lifted her arms over her head, and took a deep breath, as if readying herself like a virginal sacrifice to a volcano god. She wasn't going to dodge his attack. He saw it in the willful laxity of her body, his Sharingan-bright gaze reading every minute movement. She _wanted_ to bleed.

Instead of slamming into her, edge-first with his gunbai, he rammed his shoulder into her torso and stuck his feet tight to the boulder. The force sent her careening off the boulder, and he followed through, feet-first into the small of her back, sending her further away from the children. Vines immediately erupted from the pebbled beach, wrapping and twisting around the crates, snapping and prying apart the wedges. As the children were cradled and pulled towards Hashirama, protected against further attacks, Natsumi allowed herself to get drenched in the crashing waves so she could complete her summon.

Out of the corner of his eye, Madara saw Natsumi drop an orca whale on top of the longboat, smashing it to smithereens.

The woman realized what happened to their longboat in mid-air. She righted herself and landed on the pebbly side of the beach, crouching low as a wave crashed down on her. Her hair was sodden and tangled as she straightened upwards, and her eyes glowed _red_. Not like Madara's – _oh shit_. He saw the strike in his vision before it happened, but could do nothing to change his trajectory or momentum. A clawed hand of red, bubbling and demonic, materialized from the woman's side. He barely raised his gunbai in time to protect himself. He felt the metal vibrate as it absorbed the demonic chakra, felt his hair sizzle and burn as the clawed hand deformed and melted around the shield. He managed to backpedal just in time to avoid losing any hair.

As the woman straightened from her crouch, as fiery-red chakra tails unfurled behind her, Madara had a sinking feeling in his gut that he might've taken on more than he could single-handedly manage. "Well," he said, pausing to catch his breath and his whirling thoughts as he stood on a slick boulder, just beyond the crushing reach of the waves, "I wasn't aware that you tailed beasts ventured out to the South Seas."

As the ( _one, two, three, oh shit four, five, fucking six, **seven**_ ) tails unfurled, the woman laughed. _How did she manifest the Nanabi?_ Her voice was shrill and high-pitched – Madara felt his teeth ache as the sound of it. "Ah, _svass_ ," she sounded like she was four years old, with the pitch and the tone, nearly incomprehensible with her thick accent, "this beast goes to those who are the most blessed. She is a most excellent harbinger of luck. Jashin loves her deeply. Come, let us dance together, before I send you on your merry way to the halls of _Valhöll_ _."_

Natsumi's voice could barely be heard over the crashing waves, pushed onward by a howling gale of wind. "I wanna fight her!"

Hashirama's voice echoed back, much closer and much louder, "Your sister said to heel!" There was a squawk of protest, as if Hashirama had forcibly made Natsumi do just that, with the use of his Mokuton.

Madara enjoyed a good dance, whether it was in battle or with a woman, but suspected – given the proximity of the children – that he wouldn't enjoy dancing with this woman, or her tailed demon – was she channeling the damn thing? – nor did he want to go near any halls of any Valwhatamacallit. He freed his kusarigama from where he had carefully stored it around his waist, and swung the razor-sharp sickle in an arc overhead – the chain's long range may give him the distance he needed to avoid contact with the bubbling red chakra.

The woman chased him, clawing with pawed hands and tails that shot forward like piercing lances. Madara skipped backwards, careful to stay out of the rising tides, maintaining balance upon the crashing waves as he deflected the chakra hands and tails with his gunbai, and struck her with the sickle blade of his kusarigama. The bare skin of his wrists sizzled wherever the demonic chakra licked his skin, forming blisters the size of oysters. He gritted his teeth against the pain as she laughed when the sickle blade ripped through her cheek, flaying it open to the bone. The flap of skin and muscle bubbled red with the demonic chakra, not bleeding and not healing.

Madara tried to lead her further away from the children, angling backwards, as Hashirama's Mokuton trees lifted the children above the waves. They were drenched, but not drowning. In between limbs and leaves, Madara briefly caught saw the flash of the Sharingan as his nephew, Obito, pushed his face forward to watch.

A tremendous blow from three of the seven tails drove Madara backwards through the air and into the swelling sea. He forced himself to the surface, water walking but more like water wading thanks the water's turbulence, shaking drenched hair from his eyes, in time to see the two clawed hands reform into a pair of wings. With a shriek of laughter and a sweep of the wings, the woman threw herself into the air – she left behind a trail of exploding sparkles that made his eyes sting, and then everything went blindly white.

 _This is bullshit!_ Madara thought. Hyperaware of his sudden vulnerability, Madara immediately dodged left, shielding his head and side with the gunbai as he prayed for a return of his vision. He felt an incredible swell of demonic power – it made the ends of his drenched hair stand on end – then a ripple of black through the air faster than the speed of thought – the resulting explosion when it detonated against the Mokuton surrounding the children threw Madara backwards. He heard the children scream in terror or pain, heard Hashirama yell, and felt his heart leap to his throat at the thought of Obito's face bubbling and melting off his body, of Madara trying to explain to Izuna how he hadn't been able to protect his son.

Madara's eyes burned from more than just the white sparkle-dust as he threw himself towards the children and his friend. He had only enough time to form Susanoo in its most rudimentary form before there was another ripple of black, and then his entire body vibrated in agony as the tailed beast ball struck Susanoo. His vision returned with bursts of color – red, gold, blue – so much blue – as Uzumaki Mito's voice rose above the howling wind and matched the South Sea woman's screams.

Golden chakra chains erupted from Mito's torso and slammed into the seven-tailed beetle flying fifty meters overhead. Her deep-green kimono was saturated from the crashing waves that drenched the boulder she was perched upon, the seals dangling from her crimson-red hair oddly dry. Gripping the chakra chains with both hands, Mito yanked them downward, driving the Nanabi antennas-first into the sea. The sweeping tidal wave nearly knocked Susanoo over as Madara blocked the water from swamping the children.

"Keep them covered!" Hashirama yelled at Madara as he bolted over Susanoo's head, skipping across the waves toward Mito. As Hashirama ran, great trees erupted from the sea, branches stabbing through and encircling the Nanabi. There was a deep guttural scream as deep brown wood and glowing golden chakra chains tore through the tailed beast. Without a blink of the Sharingan, Susanoo slammed its sword downward, slicing the Nanabi in half. With an inhuman shriek that made Madara's eardrums throb, the Nanabi imploded for a moment, collapsing into a tight ball of burning red, and then exploded into a wide, vertical column of red chakra that would've fried Hashirama and Mito if Hashirama hadn't grabbed Mito and shunshinned towards the beach with a rising wall of Mokuton deflecting everything that followed at their heels.

Madara felt something that was more than seawater sliding down his face, like thick tears. With the Nanabi dispelled, the howling wind and crashing waves almost seemed deafening quiet. Feeling every muscle scream in protest and every bone throb in agony, he carefully turned himself – and the bright blue skeletal Susanoo – about. The Mokuton parted as Susanoo's arms dipped down and gathered the children up and out of the sea water.

Hashirama whistled. "Defenses borne of love withstand the greatest attacks of hate. That is truly a great gift, Madara."

Feeling his breath rattle in his chest, Madara carried the children to the beaches, past the perimeter of the boulders – many shattered from the tailed beast ball – and out of the rising tide and storm. Hashirama and Mito followed. Further up, he saw the other Senju and Uchiha men, the Uzumaki men and women, the Inuzuka women and their ninken, and the remaining living raiders that were bruised, beaten, and thoroughly trussed up with chains tagged with fuuinjutsu seals. He wondered who suggested or allowed for South Sea raiders to be kept alive. As Susanoo stooped and gently deposited the children on the ground, the Senju men flinched, the Uchiha clansmen angled their bodies away from him, the Inuzuka women shuddered, and the four Uzumaki – three men, one woman – carefully avoided eye contact.

Fear. The skeletal giant that was Susanoo was as alien, as deadly as the Nanabi, and everyone saw that he was the source of it. Madara was too exhausted and in too much pain to feel anything other than annoyance – so what if his special talent looked frightful and a bit hideous? Not everyone could make their special gift look all leafy and green and cute.

Natsumi, her limbs trembling somewhat, stumbling up to Madara. Unlike the others, her eyes were bright with delighted excitement. She thumped one of the knees with a fist, whistling in greedy admiration. He barely managed not to grunt in pain, or flatten her with Susanoo's sword. "This is thing is awesome!" she declared. She threw her arms around Susanoo's leg and slid half-way down, as if her legs finally decided they were done with walking. "Is it a summon? I want it!" She clung to Susanoo like it was her axe.

"No." He willed Susanoo away as Hashirama raised a Mokuton wall to shield them from the storm's wind, tidal surge, and fast-approaching rain. Natsumi whined in disappointment, but he ignored that. Madara forced himself to look as casual as possible as he casually sat crosslegged on ground, and reluctantly accepted a dirty cotton handkerchief from Natsumi – he was not going to think of where she might've had this square cloth tucked away under her pelvic-sized leather girdle – and wiped the streaks of blood from his face. It was totally normal for one's orbital sockets to bleed.

There was a tug on his sleeve. He looked up to see a blurred Obito clinging to the wet material. Obito flinched backwards, eyes widening in fear, before he steadied himself and said, "Where's Father?"

Madara wondered if he was now officially scarier than the raiders who had kidnapped the children, scarier even than the berserker who had slaughtered Obito's mother. That was… He was fairly sure it was not flattering, and he may have to reconsider certain life choices if this was how his kin now viewed him. He carefully placed his hand on Obito's shoulder. He felt a tremor in the four year old's body, and decided that it was probably a combination of cold and exhaustion. "Your father is coming. He will be here, soon."

Natsumi collapsed on the ground next to Madara, and then clamped a glowing green hand around his wrist. He nearly stabbed her in the neck as pain shot up his arm. "Here, let me take care of these for you." Madara tried to pull his arm free. Natsumi's grip tightened. "I could let Hashirama heal you, but you can't stay like this. They'll get infected easily enough."

Madara looked at his friend, who smiled hopefully. Hashirama's hands had recently been near a bleeding vagina, and although Hashirama had done his best to thoroughly scrub them on the run, Madara had standards. And then he turned his gaze on the children. Those who were looking at him – even the Uchiha children – shrank away from him in fear. "You should check them over," he told Hashirama. His niece's face was swollen and purple, like she had been struck. It would break Izuna's heart to see the face of his daughter battered. "Make sure they're all right."

Hashirama immediately turned towards the children, schooling his face into a serene gentleness. "Of course! We want to return everyone to their families in the best health that they can be!"

Ever since he had awakened the Mangekyo, Madara was aware that many in his clan feared him. He was used to the fear, although Uchiha children – who had never seen him in battle – hadn't gazed with the same eyes as their adult counterparts. As Natsumi soothed away the agony in his body, hands roaming in what he supposed was meant to be impartial (he did glare at her when her hands caressed his chest, even though those muscles felt better for it), Madara figured that he would rather have his clan alive and living in fear of him, instead of just dead.


	8. Chapter 8

The storm died as quickly as it blew in. As the rain stopped and the wind settled, some of the Inuzuka women and their ninken scrounged up enough wood to burn, although it was still damp enough that it billowed black after Uchiha Gojio managed to light the bonfire. Tobirama and Boshi came limping in (Tobirama's entire left leg was saturated red with blood, Boshi supported herself with her ninken since her right ankle was swollen three times the size it should be, even with the supportive leather wrappings she had used), and gratefully accepted the tins of ramen that Mito had prepared for everyone from Natsumi's stash. The twenty-seven children had been especially hungry; the raiders had forced them to travel for so long and so fast, they hadn't stopped to feed them more than once a day. Madara had no idea how Natsumi managed to stuff that many tins into several storage scrolls, but it was better than the ninken scrounging up a deer that someone might feel like dismantling by hand.

"You're right," Mito told Natsumi, "there is something off about the curry flavor. I'll talk to Meji about it."

"Got rid of them?" Hashirama asked Tobirama as he poked around Tobirama's leg. A Sarutobi child had wormed her way into Hashirama's lap, elbowing all potential rivals (the Senju children) out of her way, and she barely shifted so Hashirama could have enough room to move.

Tobirama winced as Hashirama found the laceration that separated the quad muscles. "Boars," he said carefully, "require very little incentive to eat human flesh."

"That's why I feel perfectly fine with bacon," Hashirama replied as he cleaned the laceration one-handed before healing it. "They eat us, we eat them, we're tasty to each other. It's all part of the big circle of life."

"What are we doing about them?" Tobirama indicated the nine trussed-up South Sea raiders, who were kept away from the heat of the smoky bonfire, and not given any ramen. Five others had been killed in the battle. They left the bodies to rot on the beaches. Although by now, the storm and tidal surge had probably dragged the bodies out to sea. Good riddance to bad rubbish, Madara thought.

"Well," began Bashira, hands on her hips, "we were going to send them back to wherever they came from to tell their fellow raiders that the Elemental Nations are hands-off, once and for all, because none of us liked the idea of their kin coming to find them if they failed to show up. However, someone might've made that a bit difficult, on account of how the raiders currently have no ship."

As one, everyone looked at Natsumi, including Tobirama. She frowned in mid-slurp. "What did I do?"

"You squashed their ship," Bashira said, hands still on her hips. "With a whale."

Natsumi sucked in her mouthful of noodles. "Oh yeah. So I got a little caught up in the moment." She shrugged. "Big deal. We'll figure something out. I've got a pelican summon who can deliver them across the sea, alive or in pieces. Makes no difference to me."

Madara raised his gaze to Hashirama, who was too busy tending to his brother to take notice. Mito did, and her eyes were wary of Madara's. "Should we consider what message the other clans might want to add?"

"We'll wait until Shinzou-san and your brother return." Hashirama looked at Natsumi. "How far away are they?"

"About twenty kilometers. Everyone survived – well, the South Sea people didn't – but they're camping for the night." Natsumi rubbed her chin, and then reached over and patted Madara's knee. "Your brother… he's not well."

He fought down the urge to crush Natsumi's hand, and not just because she had the audacity to invade his personal space and touch him without permission. Let a person heal your injuries once, and they take it as blanket permission to get all touchy-feely. He should've let Hashirama heal him instead – at least Hashirama was fully clothed whenever he got all touchy-feely with Madara's personal space. "Is he injured?"

"Poisoned. But still alive… for now. His kidneys have lost function at this point."

Madara felt a chill race up and down his spine. He knew there was a possibility that any of them could've died while fighting to rescue their children. That everyone, so far, had managed to survive was probably a miracle. "I see," he murmured, trying not to let grief or anger take root in his heart. "Can you heal poison?"

"I might be able to heal the damage caused by poison, but without an antidote for the poison, it's just going to keep on damaging the body faster than I can heal. And I don't recognize the odor of this poison. It's probably from across the sea."

Which meant that his brother might very well be dead by the morning. As Madara raised his gaze upward, he barely made out the shape of the moon with his poor vision. Pain stabbed at his temples, but he ignored such with long-practiced ease. If nothing else, he prayed that his brother would survive long enough to see that his children were safe and sound.

oOoOoOo

When Shinzou and the others arrived at the makeshift camp, it was just after dawn and most people were still asleep. The new arrivals rode in on massive summoned wolves that made no sound as they stepped across the pebbled beach, and the flotsam and jetsam that yesterday's storm had pushed ashore. Shinzou's wolf was scarred, half of one ear had been torn away long ago, and it watched everyone with the eerie, quiet cunning of a predator sizing up its food. Izuna rode behind Shinzou, with one arm loosely wrapped around her waist and the other draped over her shoulder. Izuna's forehead nestled into the crook of her neck. The poncho, just before his forehead, was drenched in blood.

"He's alive, but barely," Shinzou told Madara as he quickly approached. Given the danger the wolf exuded, Madara made sure to telegraph each move and not suddenly, at that. "He wants to see his children." Madara carefully pulled Izuna off the wolf. His brother was taller and leaner than him, but in this moment, as Izuna smelled sickly sweet and his skin felt sticky-clammy, Izuna seemed so small and fragile.

 _Well, at least I'll have a chance to say good bye?_ Madara thought bitterly to himself as he carefully carried Izuna to where the children had been more-or-less snuggled in a warm, furry pile of ninken. Apparently, dogs were a great source of comfort for traumatized children, and the Inuzuka women had willingly allowed their battle-hardened ninken to double as therapy animals. _I need to keep things together._ Losing control and being passionate on the battlefield was one thing; losing control in a situation where there was no immediate danger was another. He was surrounded by Hashirama's kin and the children of other clans – children, Madara knew, who probably had very big mouths that would readily supply a treasure of details to their elders once returned to their respective clans – so he had to maintain a tight leash on his emotions.

"Brother?" Izuna turned his face towards Madara's chest, sniffing deeply as if he could catch Madara's scent.

"I'm here."

"Are they alive?"

"Alive and well." Madara crouched and set Izuna down, propping him up against some large pieces of driftwood. "I have to untangle them from the pile of other children." Before he could do so, Izuna snatched his wrist. His eyelids were caked shut from the foul-smelling ichor that slowly leaked beneath them.

"Wait – a moment, just between us."

Madara glared at the four adults – two Senju who had the early morning watch, Uzumaki Mito, and an Inuzuka woman – who were lounging in the area. They took the very blatant hint and stepped away. Then he lowered his head so it was close to Izuna's trembling lips. "You have your moment." It was probably the only moment left in Izuna's life.

"Take my eyes. When I die. Take them."

Madara used his free hand to cover Izuna's hand, still clamped around his other wrist. "I thank you for your gift. A little bit of you will live on in me." He wasn't going to waste time arguing on how he didn't need the eyes (he did, on account of the darkness encroaching the edges of his vision) or that Izuna would make a full recovery. In the twenty-three years he's walked with the Shinigami at his heels, Madara knew a dying man when he saw one.

"And teach my children." Izuna's grip tightened, even though his arm trembled. "My daughter… I don't want Hakuchou to be like her mother." His breath hitched, as if he fought back tears. "I don't want her to die because we always expect there to be a man to protect her. I want… I want her to be able to save her own life, because I'm not going to be there to keep it safe."

It was unprecedented to teach young girls how to fight. Their value had always been to grow up and produce offspring, to bear a new generation since the current one was likely to get killed off by enemies. And also because they weren't as strong as the male Uchiha. However, given the effective deadliness of the Inuzuka women, Madara was quickly realizing that there was no reason why the Uchiha women couldn't be every bit as deadly. The Uchiha were, after all, a superior clan. "I will."

Besides, if this village thing worked out the way that Hashirama dreamed it would, people wouldn't die on the battlefield as often, and therefore women would have a chance to be more than just broodmares. Izuna raised their clenched hands and pressed his forehead against them. "Thank you, brother," he whispered. "Perhaps my soul will find some solace, after all."

Madara took several deep breaths to steady himself. _Control_. "Wait until you say goodbye to your children before you leave this earthly plane. I'll be right back."

Izuna easily released his grip on Madara. Madara was quick in digging through the piles of ninken and children to find a snoring Obito with his arms protectively wrapped around Hakuchou. Obito rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and Hakuchou whined wordlessly over being so abruptly woken up. Obito blinked once, and then half-squealed, half-screamed as Madara set them on the ground. "Father!"

Hakuchou echoed him. "Daddy! Daddy!"

While both children carefully threw their arms around Izuna, and Izuna's face relaxed into a warm smile as he cradled the toddlers close, there was an obvious hesitancy in the movement.

"Are you dying?" Obito asked breathlessly.

Izuna's smile melted away. "Yes."

"Were you hurt when you killed the bad men?"

The smile returned, this time with a vicious slant. "Yes. But they're all dead, especially the one who killed your mother. Listen, Obito, you're going to grow up and be a strong man, and you're always going to watch out and protect your clan, right?"

Obito nodded and looked very solemn. "Yes, Father. I will protect my sister and Uncle Madara."

Izuna's laugh was more of a coughing-up-blood, but Madara choose to ignore that as he seated himself on the ground, within reach of his brother, close enough to assist if needed, but distant enough to not hover. "I don't want you to protect your sister – I want you to help her learn how to protect herself. Obito, you're not always going to be around, just like I wasn't there for Mama. Haku-chan needs to learn how to be a strong fighter, like Inuzuka Natsumi-san."

Obito glanced towards Natsumi, who was trying to bully Tobirama into warming up some water so people could have ramen for breakfast. "Does Haku-chan have to go without a shirt?"

 _("We are surrounded by the fucking sea. Why do we have to eat ramen when there's fish and urchins and clams and octopus?"_

 _"Why on earth would I want to eat slimy octopus when there's perfectly acceptable ramen right here?"_

 _"Octopus isn't slimy, you cretin!")_

Izuna laughed without coughing up blood this time, and ruffled Obito's hair with a sticky hand. "No, you'll need to make sure that she doesn't grow up to be a nudist. _That_ 's very important, Obito."

"All right, Father."

"Haku-chan…" Izuna pawed around until he found her head, and then angled it so he could plant a kiss against her forehead. "Be brave, be strong, be _fierce_. Remember, Mama was also a fighter, and we'll be watching you, together, she and I."

It was another twenty minutes before Izuna passed away. He tried to stay awake for most of those last precious moments, speaking softly to his children of anything that seemed to cross his mind – honor, clan, family, love, strength, botany, and even a half-minute rave on how tomatoes were one of the most underrated fruits and noodles would taste _amazing_ if they were dressed in a thick, spiced tomato sauce, much better than that curry-flavored ramen. Eventually, Izuna drifted unconscious, arms still wrapped around his two children, who cuddled close to his chest, and thirty-two breaths later (Madara counted each one with his Sharingan, memorizing the last moments of his last living brother), he died.

It was, Madara realized with a breathless sense of awe, the most peaceful, most beautiful death he had ever seen. It was a strange blessing to see someone he loved just slip away, smiling and hopeful for the future. He had seen countless deaths in his twenty-six years of life – most of them were brutal and bloody, some vicious and prolonged, especially if due to infection or torture – but none so serene, even in those lucky or skilled enough to live to a ripe old age. He desperately hoped that his and Hashirama's dream for peace would give others the opportunity to such happiness and peace – not just in life, but also in death.

His brother, he thought as he rose to his feet, _deserved_ this.

The South Sea raiders, on the other hand, did not deserve a peaceful death.

Madara directed some of his clansmen to prep Izuna's body. He wouldn't be doing any eye transfers here – the notion was utterly ridiculous with the current audience, he refused to ever be so vulnerable when surrounded by so many outsiders, and he had no intention of spilling any more clan secrets than what had already been given away, even if he planned on uniting his clan with others in a village – and approached Uzumaki Mito. "Are any of your storage scrolls large enough to hold a body?" he quietly asked.

Mito's eyes flickered towards Izuna. "Are you hoping to preserve the body long enough to do a proper send off with the rest of your clan?"

Keeping the eyes preserved long enough to transfer them when it was safe to do so was actually his intention, but Mito's reasoning easily sidestepped clan secrets, so Madara silently nodded.

"I don't have anything currently, but I can have something ready in an hour if you're willing to wait." Mito's eyes then flickered to Hashirama, who had somehow managed to charm some of the Uchiha children into forming teams with some of the Senju children to gather a decent number of clams for breakfast. Natsumi's breakfast choice of ramen had been soundly vetoed by everyone else while Izuna had tried to explain the difference between sunflowers and daffodils to his daughter.

"Any plans for the raiders?" He indicated their prisoners with a tilt of his head. They were shivering and cold, silent, as weak as limp noodles from the seals that Mito had slapped on them last night.

Mito pressed her lips together. "My clan evidently did a lousy job in making sure they'd never come back." Although, to be fair to the Uzumaki clan, the South Sea raiders had avoided them completely when they raided the other clans, even though the Uzumaki were almost as close to the sea as the Sarutobi clan. "In this, I'll follow Hashirama's lead."

Madara briefly Hashirama with narrowed eyed as the man got an eyeful of octopus ink from one of the tidal pools.

Madara wandered over to Shinzou, who passively watched the distant ocean waves as she breastfed Koppun. He sat down on the boulder next to her and clasped his hands together as he resumed watching the paired Uchiha and Senju children (he…he wasn't going to think about the logistics of breastfeeding with pierced nipples. He just _wasn't_ ). He waited for her acknowledgement.

The problem with waiting on Shinzou to acknowledge _anyone_ was that she was as patient as a stalking predator, waiting for the prey to be lulled into a sense of false security. When the infant had finished eating and Shinzou busied herself with burping, Madara decided that the best defense was a good offense, and made the first move.

"Have you been thinking of what sort of message to send back with the South Sea raiders that will keep them off our shores, once and for all?"

Shinzou snorted. "I planned on ripping out their throats with my bare hands and dumping the bodies on the South Seas' shorelines with my sister's pelican summon."

"Wouldn't it be better to leave at least one alive to drive home the message of how we're strong enough to defeat their god's chosen warriors?"

Shinzou pursed her lips in thought for a long moment, eyes narrowed. Then she shoved Koppun into Madara's arms. "Yeah, we probably should." She fluidly stood – gone was the gangly sway when she had been so very pregnant – and stalked towards the raiders. He hurried after her, trying not to drop a newly-born infant on its head, reasonably sure that running through battle with a sharp blade and not accidentally skewering himself on it had been unexpectedly excellent training when it came to running with newborns.

Shinzou stopped in front of the raiders, and then made a show of slowly walking the line of them, studying each individual with a predatory gleam in her eye. Nostrils flaring, she carefully reached over to grasp the chin of the oldest South Sea raider – a man whose hair and beard were silver with age, and face heavily lined with wrinkles – and forced his face upward to meet her eyes. "You lack the scent of fear. You're either very confident in yourself, or very foolish."

The man defiantly spat in her face.

Natsumi swiped the saliva away, and gave him a smile that would've raised the hair on the back of Madara's neck if he wasn't so damn tired and emotionally numb from Izuna's death. "Foolish, I think. But you don't realize that I know who your son is. I can smell the blood that runs through his veins, the same blood as yours."

Someone had left a ramen tin filled with water just out of reach of the thirsty raiders. Likely it was a vindictive Senju – or a vindictive Inuzuka. Shinzou rolled a knee-high rock closer to the elderly man, emptied the tin of its water, and then set it in on the rock. Shinzou ignored Hashirama's and Mito's approach as she reached into the line of raiders, pulled the youngest raider forward by his hair – a lanky late-aged teenager – and then forced the lad to kneel between her and the eldest with a bone-cracking kick to the back of the lad's knees. Her claws sunk deep into the lad's scalp; rivlets of blood dripped down his face. He thrashed against her grip and screamed obscenities as Shinzou in his native tongue.

 _("Are we torturing them before we send them back?" Hashirama loudly whispered to Mito._

 _Mito's whisper was just as loud. "Women are hormonal after giving birth. Leave her alone."_

 _"No, I'm pretty sure that Shinzou has always been this vindictive; let's not blame it on hormones," Hashirama replied. "Just for the record, I'm not exactly protesting the torture.")_

The elderly man's expression hardened, and he lifted his chin. "We die with honor, _bikkja_."

Shinzou held his gaze for a long moment. "The only honorable death this day was his brother's," she indicated Madara with her head, "Your son will not be provided such." Then her head tilted downward, body tightening like a coiling spring, or a wolf readying itself for a strike. "Do you know what it's like to see your child's eyes as she dies, begging you to save her, and you can only watch helplessly because there's nothing you can do? I do. And it's a terrible feeling to live with for the rest of your life." Her hand blurred as she struck – the lad convulsed in her grip as she sunk her claws into his throat around the prominent jut of the larynx, and ripped it away. Blood gushed and spurted, coating the elderly man as he rose awkwardly to his knees and shouted, and splattered into the tin.

Madara watched with his Mangekyo Sharingan – Shinzou kept her grip on the teenager's hair, and her eyes trained on the elderly man as the lad both bled and choked to death. The elderly man's shouts turned into whimpers, and then trailed into a miserable silence. Shinzou tossed the body away once it bled out, and then lifted the blood-filled ramen tin to her lips. She took a long sip. "There will be no next time," she told the raider. "My kinswomen and I will catch your scent in the wind if you cross the seas towards us again. We will cross the ocean to meet you, we will destroy your ship as easily as my sister did yesterday with her whale, and we won't stop until we've reached your shores, and we will kill every woman – young and old, able-bodied and feeble – and rip the testicles off every man. And you can watch your people die off with no women to breed as easily as you watched your son die.

"This," she added with another sip, "I swear upon the spilled blood of my enemies." Then she smiled sweetly at Madara, and held the tin of blood out to him. "Would the Uchiha join me in this vow against the South Seas people?"

Madara felt Hashirama's and Mito's piercing gaze as he accepted the tin with one hand, since his other arm and hand was occupied in holding the infant. He didn't hesitate (although he forced his gag reflex back) as he made a show of taking a deep drink. The elderly man was horrified, seeing the Mangekyo so close – the glint of them over the rim of the crimson-filled cup probably didn't help. Madara summoned the Susanoo behind himself, allowing the mighty warrior to take only the most basic form. It dropped to its knees, and lowered its skull to study the raiders. "The Uchiha," Madara said as the baby cooed and clumsily reached for the tin, "will join you in this endeavor."

Shinzou took the tin away. "Koppun-chan is too young to partake in the blood of our enemies. Babies need to be at least a week old before we allow that."

Oh gods (except Jashin, _he_ wasn't invited in Madara's plea to the Higher Powers That Be), he _really_ hoped that Shinzou was just putting on a show for the raiders, and that the Inuzuka women didn't actually go around bloodletting their enemies and feeding the fluids to infants. That was just disturbing.

Natsumi draped herself across Susanoo's bony foot. "Are you _sure_ I can't have one?" she pleaded as she hugged a toe.

oOoOoOo

After watching Natsumi whine about not getting her very own Susanoo – Shinzou sternly told her sister that their mother bred with the wrong man for _that_ to ever be a possibility – Madara wandered off with Koppun to sit beside Tobirama, who was steadfastly boiling and peeling cooked clams for the children.

"You got a blood mustache," Tobirama said without looking up from his work. There were a few flatter rocks that had been set close to the bonfire. Thick layers of kelp rested on the flat rocks, cooking from the near-by heat. The combined scents of cooking kelp and clams, along with the flavor in his mouth, was enough to make his stomach roll in protest.

Madara wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve and did his best not to shudder in front of Hashirama's little brother. The thick, metallic flavor in his mouth was disgusting, and he wanted to wretch, but couldn't do that until the South Sea raiders were out of sight. He had a certain image to uphold in front of their enemies, and even the Senju.

"Nice summon," Tobirama added.

Madara gritted his teeth, and told himself that it would be inappropriate to throttle everyone who assumed that Susanoo was a summon. "It's not a summon. It's a _gift_."

"Sure, like how that black fire of Izuna's was a gift? Odd way to describe such a destructive power, and ugly as sin, to boot."

"Stronger than Natsumi's whale."

Tobirama paused in consideration, and then shrugged. "With a sword like that? Yeah, it probably is." He handed Madara a cup of clean water. Madara reluctantly accepted it, and then sniffed to check for any suspicious odors. It smelled like clams, but mostly because Tobirama had just finished shelling the cooked clams. "Really? If I wanted to poison you, I'd sneak some puffer fish into your food. The water's to wash the taste of blood out of your mouth."

Madara considered the likelihood of Tobirama poisoning him with Hashirama so close. The likelihood was quite high. He turned to Bashira, who carried another bucket of clams to Tobirama. "Considering how my brother's body is still warm, having _died_ from _poison_ , does this smell safe to you?"

Bashira sniffed, but out of disdain and not for any poison. "It's clean, you paranoid bastard. And there's no puffer fish anywhere in the clams."

All right, then. Madara swished and spit the water from his mouth several times, until the cup was empty. He still felt like vomiting and his stomach still swam in protest, but at least he didn't feel like scrubbing his tongue with the backside of a porcupine. Tobirama wordlessly handed him a ramen tin full of clam meats, topped with several thick sheets of cooked kelp. As Madara stared at it, Tobirama rolled his eyes. "Go share it with your niece and nephew." Tobirama's voice dropped into a whisper. "They should eat, even if they don't feel like it."

Tobirama was just as proud as Madara – Tobirama bent his neck only when Hashirama flat-out told him to, and reluctantly at that.

Madara, however, had better manners than Tobirama. "Thank you," he said pleasantly.

"I didn't do it because they're your niece and nephew," Tobirama said, not looking up from the clams he cleaned and prepped for boiling. "I did it because they're Izuna's children."

oOoOoOo

Madara had only seen pelicans from afar – he had always thought they were ugly birds and worthless hunters, especially when compared to falcons. Nonetheless, he was quite impressed with what Natsumi managed to summon. The pelicans' beaks were large enough for two grown men to be safely stuffed inside, even if they protested the entire time.

"We're letting you go back home," Natsumi told one such protester as she shoved him back into the pelican's mouth, but not before breaking the man's nose. "And even better – for you – we're not sending you back in funeral silks, which is more respect than you gave us when you raided our clans."

Once the raiders were tucked inside the beaks, the pelicans took flight across the ocean. It was just past breakfast, and the children had become comfortable enough with their rescuers to wander through the ranks of clans that they weren't originally allied with. One of the Senju girls had made a seaweed crown and had talked Obito into wearing it. Beside him, Hakuchou was also wearing her own seaweed crown, and somehow managed to look very regal despite the slimy limp seaweed plastering her hair.

 _I hope you can see this,_ Madara thought to his brother as Mito wordlessly handed him the promised scroll, after she had sealed the body within. "How much do I owe you?" he asked her.

"You owe me nothing. This is my thanks to you and your men for willingly assisting my Inuzuka kin in rescuing the children. The gods alone know there probably isn't enough money or favors in the world that can make up for putting up what you probably had to endure, what with Shinzou giving birth and Natsumi being herself." Madara studied Mito's hair; it was darker than the Hell Hounds, closer to auburn in color. Mito laughed – it sounded like chimes in the wind. "Their sire was my mother's older brother. Although we're two different clans, we've always been close."

And with that said, Mito drifted to stand beside Hashirama. They shared a smile together that hinted towards affection of heart and body. Although they didn't link fingers, Hashirama deliberately brushed his fingertips against the back of Mito's hand.

With a distant sense of horror, Madara realized that Hashirama could potentially be married to what amounted to a clan of beasts. He wasn't sure if he should be proud of his friend's strength and willpower, or terrified of what could become of his friend.

 _I'll be all alone._

Natsumi stumbled over to Madara. She was slowly recovering her grace as the uncontrollable twitches decreased, but still had the occasional muscle spasm that threw her off balance. "Are you suuuuuuuure I can't have my very own Susanoo?" she asked as she draped herself over Madara's shoulder, pressing her ridiculous breasts into his arm. "I'll let you sign a whale contract! And I'll even let you sign my goose contract! They're vicious little bastards. You'd appreciate a bad-tempered goose."

Madara didn't want to have anything more to do with bad-tempered geese than he wanted anything from Inuzuka Natsumi. "This is not something I could willfully give you, even if I wanted to."

Being alone, he decided as Tobirama had to pry Natsumi off of him and drag her away, was sometimes underrated.

 _oOoOoOo_

 _The Uzumaki took the Sarutobi children with them. They didn't have far to travel – twenty-five kilometers – before reaching the Sarutobi village. Since the Nara would be waiting there to take the Akimichi clan children, the Inuzuka women packed up their children, their ninken, a great deal of kelp to be seasoned and cured (via the Akimichi clan's secret recipe – Shinzou had no problem somehow talking the edlest Akimichi into spilling the secret), and the Akimichi children, and followed after the Uzumaki._

 _This left the Senju and the Uchiha standing awkwardly side-by-side with just their own children._

 _"I knew I should've asked Bashira to borrow her horses," Hashirama said as he hoisted one small Senju child to perch on his shoulders. He pouted, largely because he hadn't been able to convince Bashira that she should share her summon contract with him._

 _"It seems oddly quiet without the women here," Tobirama replied. Most of the Inuzuka women had been quiet – Natsumi made enough noise for her six companions and older sister. And yes, without Natsumi's background chatter, it did seem strange to be able to hear the sweeping waves and the calls of the seagulls._

 _Seeing as how they had gotten along so well and that they had the same path to travel for a hundred kilometers before they needed to part ways, Hashirama and Madara decided that they would continue sticking together. Despite Tobirama's grumblings, and because they had to travel at a more leisurely pace with the young children on tow, it was a good opportunity to continue working on their village. Besides, they had expensive armor to fetch before it was nabbed by some ambitious passerbys._

 _"Next spring?" Hashirama asked Madara, his expression_ _glowing_ _with hope._

 _"Next spring," Madara agreed. The sunshine bright smile he received from his friend didn't make up for the loss of lives they had suffered during the peace treaties, but it went far in lifting Madara's grieving spirit. "Provided you can actually find a place where we can stick a village."_

 _"Oh. I've already got that covered. I'm going to bet my clan's wealth against_ _Nara_ _'s territory, and we'll see who actually has true luck with blackjack."_

 _Madara glanced at Tobirama, just to be sure that he heard correctly. From the pinched look on Tobirama's face, yes, he had indeed heard Hashirama correctly. "Really?" he asked, his voice dry. "Wouldn't the odds be more in your favor if you played poker?"_

 _"That's only for if we can't find a new deck of cards. I can still win, even if my opponent marked the cards."_

 _May the Sage of Six Paths forefend them all – their future plans of peace and prosperity rested on Hashirama's luck at drawing a decent hand of cards._ _May the gods help us all if Hashirama ever has children or grandchildren who follow in his footsteps._

 _oOoOoOo_

 _The Uzumaki took the Sarutobi children with them. They didn't have far to travel – twenty-five kilometers – before reaching the Sarutobi village. Since the Nara would be waiting there to take the Akimichi clan children, the Inuzuka women packed up their children, their ninken, a great deal of kelp to be seasoned and cured (via the Akimichi clan's secret recipe – Shinzou had no problem somehow bullying the eldest Akimichi into spilling the secret), and the Akimichi children, and followed after the Uzumaki._

 _This left the Senju and the Uchiha standing awkwardly side-by-side with just their own children._

 _"I knew I should've asked Bashira to borrow her horses," Hashirama said as he hoisted one small Senju child to perch on his shoulders. He pouted, largely because he hadn't been able to convince Bashira that she should share her summon contract with him._

 _"It seems oddly quiet without the women here," Tobirama replied. Most of the Inuzuka women had been quiet – Natsumi made enough noise for her six companions and older sister. And yes, without Natsumi's background chatter, it did seem strange to be able to hear the sweeping waves and the calls of the seagulls._

 _Seeing as how they had gotten along so well and that they had the same path to travel for a hundred kilometers before they needed to part ways, Hashirama and Madara decided that they would continue sticking together. Despite Tobirama's grumblings, and because they had to travel at a more leisurely pace with the young children on tow, it was a good opportunity to continue working on their village. Besides, they had expensive armor to fetch before it was nabbed by some ambitious passerbys._

 _"Next spring?" Hashirama asked Madara, his expression_ _glowing_ _with hope._

 _"Next spring," Madara agreed. The sunshine bright smile he received from his friend didn't make up for the loss of lives they had suffered during the peace treaties, but it went far in lifting Madara's grieving spirit. "Provided you can actually find a place where we can stick a village."_

 _"Oh. I've already got that covered. I'm going to bet my clan's wealth against_ _Nara_ _'s territory, and we'll see who actually has true luck with blackjack."_

 _Madara glanced at Tobirama, just to be sure that he heard correctly. From the pinched look on Tobirama's face, yes, he had indeed heard Hashirama correctly. "Really?" he asked, his voice dry. "Wouldn't the odds be more in your favor if you played poker?"_

 _"That's only for if we can't find a new deck of cards. I can still win, even if my opponent marked the cards."_

 _May the Sage of Six Paths forefend them all – their future plans of peace and prosperity rested on Hashirama's luck at drawing a decent hand of cards._ _May the gods help us all if Hashirama ever has children or grandchildren who follow in his footsteps._


	9. Chapter 9

They broke ground, literally, the next spring. Well, Hashirama broke ground. Apparently, he had been practicing how to grow trees in such a wall that it sent a clear signal to the rest of the world the strength and protection they could offer clans who joined them. The walls that Hashirama raised could've fit the entire Capital of Fire Country within, and still have plenty of room left over for some enterprising farmers and ranchers.

"Show off," Madara declared blandly, refusing to show Hashirama just how impressed he actually was.

Hashirama nudged him with his elbow and winked.

"Sweet," Senju Touka declared as she herded the other Senju women and children forward. Madara entered their village, side by side with Hashirama, and chose to ignore how warily his clan followed at his heels. Not because they were surrounded by Senju, but because his own reputation and the steadily growing fear.

His vision was crystal-clear, thanks to his brother's eyes – it had been all too easy to see the fear. He had done his best to avoid using his Mangekyo Sharingan over the winter, trying to mitigate the damages caused by fighting a tailed beast with a gigantic summoned skeleton warrior and then drinking the blood of his enemy (damn that Shinzou to the hallowed halls of Vallwhachamacallit, to the oh-so-fine company of clan-murdering berserkers). It took a great deal of convincing his clan that indoor plumbing really was the wave of the future, as most people felt it was incredibly unhygienic to have the toileting facilities in the same building as the cooking facilities. Luckily, he was able to make them see that not only did walls separate everything, but also that the toileting facilities would be warm changed many minds, given that this last winter had been colder than normal.

The lands that Hashirama raised the walls of Konohagakure upon were pristine, as most of the Nara territory was. And standing in the middle of the field, on the other side of the wall that he had created, was a very grumpy looking Nara Shikataro.

"I want a rematch," the Nara clanhead grumbled as a young child ran screaming past him, trying to kill another screaming child with what appeared to be a misshapen pinecone. Probably one of those loud, obnoxious, abandoned Inuzuka sons.

"You got a forest," Hashirama replied, proudly pointing to the walls.

" _My_ forest."

"If you didn't want to lose, then you should've have bet it."

Nara Shikataro rotated his head back and forth, cracking the vertebrae in his neck. "Or maybe I wanted a wall around my forest so I wouldn't have random Inuzuka ninken stealing my deer again."

Hashirama grinned as he threw his arm around Shikataro's shoulders. Shikataro stiffened and looked very uncomfortable, although Madara wasn't sure if it was Hashirama's proximity, or all the barely-restrained energy that seemed to radiate from Hashirama. "And look, I threw in a wall just for you, even though you lost two out of three hands!"

oOoOoOo

Gradually, other clans came. Some came initially for trading, and stayed for the free property that was offered to their clans; others came seeking protection; some came just for gossip.

"We're here to do some summer trading," Natsumi cheerfully declared the day that she and her kinsmen and ninken showed up, three months after Hashirama raised the walls. "And we're nosy."

Madara twitched, because time and distance had faded his memory of Natsumi's ridiculously-sized bosom. "You can smell what's going on from a hundred kilometers away. Why would you need to show up?" The fact that she was toting a set of white-haired, red-eyed newborn twins while her breasts leaked milk didn't help his sense of horror in the least.

"As I said, we're nosy." Then she wandered off to torment Tobirama, and Madara almost felt sorry for him, especially when Natsumi immediately denied any Senju paternity of the two girls.

As the village became larger, the world became smaller. When recognizing that the Fire Country was, essentially, solidifying its power by allowing clans to unite together in peace, rather than kill each other off, other countries began to realize that there was strength in such wisdom. Other hidden villages began to form, and clans that were traditionally nomadic slowly because village-bound. Even landed clans, like the Hyuuga, surrendered such to achieve a higher status in the village.

But there would always be those who would fail at such a life – the disenfranchised, the misanthropic, the wanderer, and the criminal. With more clans joining the village, there were fewer independent clans maintaining their territory, and so the bandits and other criminals grew bold.

The Inuzuka were one of the last major clans to finally become village bound. Madara wasn't present when they arrived six years after Konoha was established; he heard it from his eleven-year old nephew, Obito. Natsumi had been in a tremendous fight – one that not only left her disfigured and head-damaged, but had also killed her ninken, Umeboshi, and her twin daughters, Momo and Sakura. Whatever had happened to Natsumi had frightened Shinzou so much that she single-handedly dragged her entire clan, overnight, to Konoha, seeking protection for her women, children, and ninken. Madara wasn't sure what could've brought down someone as strong as Natsumi, considering how she had managed to fight on equal footing with a berserker that had slaughtered dozens of his men.

Then again, Madara knew that intelligence ultimately trumped strength, and Natsumi's strength didn't exactly rest with her logic or strategy.

He was unfamiliar with head damage. Some of his clansmen had received such head trauma that they lost their memories, lost the ability to form memories, or even lost their personalities. It all depends, Hashirama had explained to Madara, which part of the brain that was effected from the trauma. Natsumi, by all rights, took such tremendous blows to the head, that the only reason she survived was because of her Uzumaki regeneration. Unfortunately, the trauma was so thorough that her brain couldn't fully regenerate and recover.

Natsumi lost her sense of smell and, based on the number of times Madara actually had to bring her back to the Inuzuka compounds when he found her lost and wandering the village, her sense of direction. The first four months that she wandered, it was like watching a listless ghost.

Madara could understand.

Natsumi lost her daughters, her canine partner, her way of life, and her remarkable sense of smell, in a single night. She hadn't even regained consciousness when Shinzou showed up at Konoha.

Such are the winds of change, Madara mused, as he pawned Natsumi off on Tobirama one day, because there was always something about the ratfink that seemed to bring back that part of Natsumi's soul that enjoyed poking people for her own personal amusement. And, as Tobirama usually did whenever Natsumi latched onto him, he hauled her off to a ramen stand. They should cut back on the noodles, Madara thought, seeing as how she was putting on some significant weight. … Of course, it was hard to tell, given the size of her chest and how the Inuzuka women had been pressured into covering more skin since they came to Konoha.

oOoOoOo

"I think Natsumi loves Tobirama," Bashira said one Wednesday afternoon, nearly seven years to the day since Izuna's death. She and Madara were on protection detail for the Fire Daimyo as he traveled to the Autumn Suna Bazaar. "The Sage knows what she sees in him. Senju Tobirama is one hell of a sadistic bastard, and Natsumi isn't masochistic. I don't know how they get along so well. He's a real ratfink, isn't he?"

Madara decided, then and there, that Bashira was his favorite Inuzuka. The fact that she had a modest chest and she dutifully kept it covered since the Inuzuka moved to Konoha was just a bonus. The fact that she had also convinced the Daimyo that she and Madara were best used to scout ahead for dangers – when her nose clearly reported that there wasn't any actual danger – so they could get away from the smothering nobility that trailed the Daimyo like a cloud of sycophants was enough to make him propose marriage.

(Shame she said no. Something about how Inuzuka women didn't get married, and Shinzou would never approve, and he just wanted her horse summons anyway…)

oOoOoOo

When Madara came across the two small bodies in the forest, he knew that they were beyond any earthly help. He didn't know if they had died before they were born, or if they had died from exposure. The infants rested on a rotted stump, side by side, wrapped in fresh linens as white as the surrounding snow. The ground was too frozen to dig a shallow grave, and it was so late in the year that even if he did, a desperate scavenger would only dig them up for food. Their hair was carrot-orange, barely visible beneath the thick layer of frost.

"What should we do, Uncle?" Hakuchou asked. Her voice was muffled, even though the glade of aspen they stood in was barren and open to the surrounding winter. Madara had been scouting the outside perimeter of Konoha, showing his niece and nephew how to read tracks in the snow. The snow around the infants was undisturbed.

"We'll hold a funeral pyre," he replied after a moment. "Someone might've loved these babies."

Obito tsked and shook his head. "If they loved the babies, why leave them here?"

Madara didn't answer as he and his niece and nephew gathered kindling from beneath the wet, heavy snow. The small pyre they made was lit with a Grand Fireball, and the wet wood billowed black smoke as the bodies burned. It took several Grand Fireballs to maintain the funeral pyre until the bodies were reduced to ashes. Madara silently watched and prayed that their spirits would find freedom in the air that carried the smoke.

The desolate forest, trunks stark black against the faded white of snowfall seemed quietly perfect for a funeral of two, witnessed by three. He refused to entertain any thoughts on what sort of mother would leave two small babies alone in the glade.

At least, he didn't, until they ran into Tobirama and Natsumi.

Natsumi was crouched at the base of an old tree, shivering and most likely half-naked beneath the cloak that Tobirama had wrapped her in. She had clawed bloody rents across her scarred face, trails of fresh blood dribbled between her legs, and her shoulders heaved with dry sobs. Tobirama barely spared the Uchihas a flickering red glance, before he turned his attention back to keeping Natsumi's arms pinned to her side.

"My babies – she took my babies. I can't find my baby boys." Natsumi tossed her head and smacked Tobirama in the cheek. Tobirama grunted and turned his head to prevent another clobber to his face. Natsumi looked at Madara. She seemed so young and vulnerable, eyes half-crazed with grief. "Help me, please. Help me – Shinzou took my babies, and I can't smell them. I can't find my babies." She sobbed. "I want my babies back, Madara. Please help me find my babies back."

It took less than a heartbeat for Madara to put two and two together – it was nearly nine months since the Inuzuka had come to Konoha. And he had noticed Natsumi had gained some weight…Oh. Oooooohhhhh. Maybe it hadn't been the ramen. Or at least not just the ramen. And handing her a bowl of ash and bone probably wouldn't help her grief all that much.

Madara crouched in the bloodied snow in front of Natsumi as his Sharingan flickered to life, and then morphed into the Mangekyo. She was everything he loathed – vulnerable, weak, rude, demanding, _Inuzuka_. But he well remembered his brother's grief, and how the Curse of Hatred had been borne over the corpse of an unborn child no larger than the palm of Izuna's hand. "Inuzuka-san, look at me." She looked at him, eyes bright with fear – he loathed such a sight in her eyes.

Natsumi's face went slack as Madara captured her in the genjutsu. When he felt Tobirama's killing intent spike, he spoke softly to explain what she would be seeing for the next seventy-two hours. "Your babies are stillborn, and there was never any possibility that they could be revived. You will hold them in your arms, and you will say your goodbyes to them, and to the futures they will never have. You will realize that some people live before they die, and some die before they live, and you will grieve for your sons for as long as you live, but you will also know that there was nothing you could have done to change this. You will take them to the forest, accompanied by those who have loved and supported you the most, and together, you will light the funeral pyre. In the sparks of the pyre, you will see the spirits of your daughters catch the spirits of your sons, and you will watch them drift away. And while you will grieve for your lost children the rest of your life, you will also find comfort in knowing that they are together, and that when you die, they will have waited for you."

Her eyes drifted closed as his words drifted into silence. Beneath her closed eyelids, he saw flickering movement. Her body relaxed, becoming limp in Tobirama's arms. Madara allowed his Sharingan to fade as he raised his gaze to Tobirama's. "You never saw us," he said, rising from his crouch. He waved to Obito and Hakuchou, silently directing them to keep pace.

"I shall never forget," Tobirama replied. "It is as my brother said. Defenses borne of love withstands the greatest attacks of hate. Hate cannot take root where love blooms, Uchiha."

Madara took three steps away, and then stopped. He looked over his shoulder at his brother's children. Like everyone else in the clan, they flinched when the weight of his gaze rested upon them. Even though he had lived his entire life protecting them, teaching them to defend themselves against attackers, training the boy _and_ the girl to become skilled Uchiha warriors, they still feared him, as did all the other Uchiha. And if his own clanspeople feared him, why shouldn't outsiders?

He felt so alone that, sometimes, he hated and cursed Izuna for dying.

"Listen well, Senju, for I shall saw this only once." He dropped into a crouch once again, but this time so that his eyes would be level with Tobirama's. Tobirama had always hated Madara – but he had never feared Madara. He would allow himself to fall to the same level as Tobirama, just this once, in deference to the utter lack of fear. "It's not that the Uchiha hate so well, but that we love too much. We love so deeply, so strongly, so passionately, that when we lose the object of our love, we become so lost and consumed with hate that it breaks us. I don't hate because I have no love, I hate because I have loved too hard. I hate because I failed those whom I loved. And above all, _I hate myself_."

And with those final words, Madara left Tobirama and Natsumi to the silent darkness of the surrounding woods. His niece and nephew silently followed his path, too scared to walk side-by-side with their uncle.


End file.
